With Starlight in Her Eyes
by Wintermoth
Summary: Sometimes at night she would lift her head and stare at the stars with such longing that they wanted nothing more than to give them to her. (Part 3 of the Starlight 'verse).
1. Battered

**HEY LISTEN**: If you have not read up through chapter 55 of _With Starlight in Their Wake_ then turn around and go read that first because this WILL NOT make sense without prior knowledge. I'm not even kidding, you will be so lost without it. And so spoiled. Just click my username and scroll down to my stories. With Starlight in Their Wake. Purple cover. Hard to miss.

To my WSITW readers: Yooooooo! :D Well here we are, then. The novella. You can thank Kryalla Orchid for this being posted. YOU KNOW WHY KRY.

Now, without any further ado, may I present With Starlight in Her Eyes.

* * *

Rose wasn't sure how she was still moving. She'd gone past the point of pain, her limbs working on automatic, fueled by adrenaline, and she focused on drawing in air and navigating through the busy streets of Cardiff. The air was cold, stinging her cheeks, a sign of winter fast approaching. People wisely moved out of her way, almost as if they could sense how important her flight was. She wanted to find someplace isolated and pass out but she couldn't stop. Time Lords had better senses than humans (as the Doctor so loved to point out) and the Master could be tracking her like a hound this very moment.

She recalled what the TARDIS had shown her regarding the psychotic Time Lord that had stolen them both. They'd been friends once long ago when they were young but had grown into archenemies. The Master was a psychotic killer and he would take great pleasure in killing her.

She stopped only long enough for get to directions to the Road Dahl Plass from a pair of startled locals then resumed running, her legs pumping in an endless tandem. Her throat craved the relief of water, her shoulders had begun to ache even though her backpack barely had anything in it, and she wanted nothing more than to drop to the ground and wait for the inevitable arrival of paramedics. Or stop and hail a taxi, but she had no money, and she couldn't risk the Master hurting some poor cabbie to find her.

The TARDIS gave her a firm nudge in her mind, urging her on.

She was close now. Almost there, almost to Jack; he would hide her from the Master, help her rescue the others from the end of time.

Rose literally wept with relief when she saw the familiar Plass ahead of her. Memories of her first Doctor, Mickey, and Jack, of laughter and happiness, and fear and Slitheen swam to the surface but she pushed them back, lifting her hand to wipe tears from her eyes.

She raced through though the Plass, careful to avoid the remainder of what must've been some very large cracks in the ground, heading for the docks. She stumbled on the way down, her hands and knees slamming into the wood, but she pushed herself up and kept running. She could see it ahead of her, an indiscreet door in the wall next to a sign that proclaimed it to be an info center.

She grabbed the handle, wrenched the door open, then slammed it shut behind her. It was just a block of metal, but at the moment it felt like as much of an impenetrable barrier as a door of the TARDIS was. That monsterwas on the other side and Jack was somewhere on this side. She slumped against it in relief and closed her eyes, gasping down breaths of air, as tears leaked from her eyes.

"Can I help you?"

Rose's eyes opened and she lifted her head. She was in a small room with several racks of information pamphlets and magazines, a bulletin board with papers pinned to it, a few pictures and single clock on the wall. Apart from a doorway leading to a side-room there didn't appear to be any way out of here. A man with narrow eyes, short brown hair, and a wide mouth stood behind the counter, looking at her with concern. She pushed herself off the door, her head spinning suddenly, and she stumbled towards the counter, catching herself on it.

Her entire body was beginning to shake from exhaustion and her heart thudded erratically as she gasped down air. "Jack," she managed to wheeze. "I…need…Jack!"

The world around her seemed to tilt, her fingers losing their grip on the counter, and her legs gave out beneath her. She crumpled to the ground as the man let out a shout of alarm. She must've blacked out for a second, because the next thing she knew, the man was leaning over her, and she was on her back, and he was speaking, but his words were garbled. She strained her ears.

"Come on, luv, speak to me! My name's Owen Harper, I'm a doctor. Can you tell me your name?"

"He's after…me…." she panted. "Need Jack…"

Owen Harper reached into his pocket and pulled out a mobile. He spoke into it quickly and Rose struggled to hear him over the blood roaring in her ears. "You need to get up here. There's this girl, she's just run in and collapsed…looks like someone attacked her. She's…blonde, ah, about twenty? I don't know, Jack, she hasn't told me but she's said your name—"

"Jack!" she cried, hoping he would hear her through the phone.

Owen's eyebrows shot up and flipped the phone shut, slipping it back into his pocket. "I guess he's coming. Can you tell me your name?"

"Rose. Water…please…"

Owen jumped to his feet and returned a moment later with two cups of water from the cooler. He put his hand under her head and helped her sit up enough so she could drink. She swallowed the first cup greedily.

"Easy," he soothed, holding the second cup to her lips. "Don't choke."

"Thank you," she told him as he lowered her head back to the floor.

"What happened to you?"

Her head flopped from side to side. Couldn't risk it, not yet.

Behind her she heard something like a door opening and for a moment she panicked, thinking the Master had found her. A new wave of adrenaline coursed through her veins and she rolled, pushing herself up, ready to fight if she had to. An opening appeared where there had been a wall before and in the new doorway stood a certain handsome ex-Time Agent. She felt her stomach tighten and that nagging instinct hissed at her to get away, and she knew it was him, well and truly him.

"Jack!" she gasped.

His wide eyes swept over her in disbelief. "Rose?"

She nodded vigorously, which turned out to be a bad idea because the room spun again and she collapsed back onto the floor. She felt the vibrations in the wood as he ran over to her, kneeling down, and put his hand on her head.

"Oh my God, Rose," he murmured. "What happened to you? Where is the Doctor?"

She opened her eyes. "What'sthedate?"

"4th of November, 2006," Jack said quietly.

Rose closed her eyes once more. So he hadn't encountered them in his timeline yet. No wonder he'd warned her to come here if she ever needed him—it'd already happened for him.

Huddling in a ball in the ground, Rose Tyler finally allowed herself to really cry. Anguished sounds ripped their way out of her bruised chest as she hugged herself. Jack slid his arms underneath her and scooped her off the ground, holding her against his chest. She wrapped one arm around his neck and fisted her other hand into his shirt and buried her face into his shoulder. He felt wrong, so wrong, but she wasn't a Time Lord and she _knew _it wasn't in her instinct to hate, so she was able to ignore the parts of her screaming to get away, and revel in the familiar presence of her Captain, the man she'd bent the rules of reality for so he could live.

"Let's get her down to the Hub," Jack's voice rumbled in his chest. "Lock the door."

"Who is she?" she heard Owen Harper ask.

"An old friend," he said quietly, ducking his head to press a kiss to her hair. "Don't worry, Rose, it's gonna be okay."

Jack carried her into the hidden hallway. She heard the hidden door click shut and another one opened ahead of them, then close once they passed through. She heard the gentle hum and swift descent of a lift then more doors opening, bars clanking, the beeping of technology, and trickling water. It all echoed so the room had to be sizeable. She didn't look up from his shoulder to check.

She thought she heard someone gasp.

Her body was jolted almost violently and she recognized the sensation of being carried up a flight of stairs. Things smoothed out for a few more strides then she was being carried down another set of stairs.

"I'm going to put you down now," he told her. "There's a table right here."

Rose loosened her grip and allowed him to lower her onto the hard flat surface. Her arm slid from around his neck, down his arm, and latched onto his hand, gripping as tightly as she could, but she was so tired. He maneuvered her arms out of the straps of her pack and she let go of his hand just long enough for him to get the strap past.

"Rose, what happened to you?" he asked softly, kneeling down next to her, and held her hand between both of his.

Rose opened her mouth and closed it again.

"Where is _he_? Oh God, he's not…he's not dead, is he?"

She thought of the Doctor, Martha, and future-Jack, trapped at the end of the universe without the TARDIS, a broken vortex manipulator, and the Futurekind in the compound with them, hungry for flesh.

_Tired…_

"I dunno," she whimpered.

"Who did this to you?"

She shook her head.

"Is someone after you?"

She nodded. Tired. So, so tired. Tired and beaten and hungry and thirsty and she wanted her Doctor and her TARDIS.

"Is it alien? Rose, come on sweetheart, talk to me. Is it an alien?"

"Yes."

"Toshiko!" Jack barked, his voice growing distant. "Run a ten-mile sweep for any non-terrestrial life forms. If it's not from this planet want to know where it is! Owen, get your ass _down here now_!"

"Jack…I'm so…so sorry," she whispered.

"For what?" Jack waited for an answer that never came. She exhaled once and her hand went limp in his. He swallowed and pressed two fingers to her throat to make sure she hadn't gone and died on him—he had a feeling his immortality wouldn't matter if that happened, because the Doctor would kill him until he stayed dead—and was relieved to find a pulse beneath his fingertips. It was weak, but there. She was alive. Dirty, sweaty, makeup ruined, hair tangled and windblown, pale and beaten half to death, but she was _alive_ and she was _here._

"Rose Tyler," he murmured.

He'd always hoped he'd see her again. That when he found a version of the Doctor that would coincide with him she'd be there, too. Mere weeks ago he'd watched through the CCTV as the Doctor, Rose, Mickey, and a younger version of himself gallivanted around up on the Plass. He'd ached to run up there and warn them all of what was coming, but he knew he couldn't. He'd watched his younger self with envy. That him was in one of the happiest times of his life, with two people he loved, and it would be over all too soon. Rose glowing in the sunlight, smiling and laughing and loving, he hadn't known what her fate was until now.

Last he'd known, the Doctor had sent her home in the TARDIS—oh, God, was this the date he'd sent her back to? Was she here for help getting back to the Gamestation? But how had she known to come to Cardiff to find him?

He studied her face intently. _No, that's not it_, he realized. The image of her last time he'd seen her on the Gamestation was forever burned into his mind. This Rose did not look like that. This might have been close to the date, but she was not the Rose that had been with him on the satellite. This Rose was older, by a year at the very least, her hair was shorter, and the muscles in her arms were more defined. She'd grown up since then, hopefully with the Doctor by her side. But he wasn't with her now and she didn't even know if he still lived, which meant somewhere in time, something was seriously wrong. She looked like she'd been in a fight already.

_But how did you even know I was here?_

Owen slipped on his white coat and stood on the opposite side of the table. "So you do know her, then?"

"Like I said, she's an old friend."

Owen gave him a considering look. "Alright, I need to have a look at her, and get some x-rays and blood work. She's human, right?"

Jack nodded and because he knew she would feel more comfortable knowing he'd done it and not some stranger, he removed her dirty, bloodstained clothes, leaving her only in her bra and knickers, and the chain that held her TARDIS key. Rage boiled in him at as he took in the damage to her body. She was a patchwork quilt of injuries. Her feet were swollen and red, and as for the rest of her, if it wasn't bruised, it was cut or scraped. Her arms had several discolorations shaped very distinctly like human hands. Someone had grabbed her. Jack clenched his fists so hard his entire arms shook and he swore violently. He hoped he found whoever had done this before the Doctor did, because he wanted a crack at the bastard before the vengeful Time Lord annihilated him.

He waited tensely as Owen examined her battered body and provided his own colorful commentary in regards to the state that some bastard had left her in. "She'll live," he finally announced and Jack very nearly dropped to his knees in relief. "That," he pointed to her TARDIS key, "needs to come off."

She'd always worn it around her neck, but this chain was new, shining and polished silver. He lifted the key from her chest and held it in his hand for a moment. It was warm so the TARDIS was at least somewhere nearby, but no Doctor. He hated to do it, but he slid his hand along the chain, looking for a clasp. Frowning, he looked again, feeling all long the chain, pulling it so the length behind her neck was visible, but there was no clasp. His frown melted into a smile as he recognized the object beneath his fingers.

"It's not going to come off. It's got a bio-lock on it and completely unbreakable. She's the only one that can remove it," he laughed and shook his head once. "Oh, that's so like him."

"So what are we supposed to do?"

"It's not magnetic and it's not even from Earth. It should be fine."

"And the key?"

Jack snorted. "I don't even know what this key is made out of. Just run the scans and if it interferes we'll think of something."

He was able to supply Owen with her basic medical information, immensely grateful that the Doctor had insisted he learn it in the event Jack had to get her to a hospital by himself. And that he'd managed to remember it this long. Owen ran the scans and took a sample of her blood. She was clean of any toxins or poisons, but she had a broken arm, a concussion, about a dozen pulled muscles and sprained tendons, and mild dehydration. It was a miracle she'd made it to them.

"Oh, God, I don't even know where to start," he muttered to himself.

"I don't care where you start just do something!" Jack snapped. "If she dies we're all dead."

"She's not going to die, Jack," he told him. "Not while I'm here. Now shut up a minute and let me think."

Jack gritted his teeth but kept quiet. Nearly two hundred years old but he was still horrible with medicine. Owen made up his mind and started to clean the blood and dirt off her cuts. She'd managed to get some dirt and gravel in a few of the deeper ones that he had to use tweezers to remove. While he worked on her arms and legs, Jack cleaned her face, patting tenderly around the discolored areas, and removed the blood and grime and the remains of her makeup.

"There's nothing much, Jack," Tosh said from above. Jack looked up, almost surprised to see Suzie and Toshiko standing there, watching. "Just some weevils underground and that baker fifteen blocks over."

"Alright, but keep the sweep going."

"Already done." Tosh leaned forward over the railing to get a better look. "Who is she?"

Jack swallowed. "Her name's Rose Tyler. She's an old, old friend."

Tosh peered at the blonde girl passed out on the table, making a note to look her up in a few minutes. She looked so _young_, no older than a student. She'd never heard Jack mention anyone named Rose—not that he ever mentioned anything about his past that wasn't a load of nonsense. She'd always assumed he had a dark history he could never explain and so he never bothered. This girl, though, she didn't look like she belonged in such a past at all.

"Did she come through the rift?" Suzie asked. He looked stricken at the idea so she didn't press it. Instead she asked, "Why'd she come here?"

"Probably because she couldn't go home," he guessed. "Whatever did this is probably still after her. She wouldn't risk her mum or Mickey."

"But she'd risk us?"

"No, she'd risk _me_," he corrected. "She knows I can handle it. We've been through a lot. Hell, when we first met we—" he stopped abruptly and looked down.

"Were the two of you…?" Tosh asked.

He laughed openly at that. "Unfortunately no, and not for lack of trying. She's got someone."

Some of the cuts were serious enough to require stitches. He didn't even want to know what had caused them because he was sure if he did, he would probably go out and search all of Cardiff until he found the son of a bitch. His control was slipping steadily by the minute. Rose had been silent up until Owen started stitching up a gash on her side.

"Doctor," she whimpered.

Owen blinked, startled, and leaned towards her. "Um, yes?"

"She doesn't mean you," Jack told him quietly, ghosting his fingers across Rose's temple. "It's alright, Rose. Don't worry. We'll find him."

"Doctor," she breathed once more then fell silent. Jack remained near her head, gently stroking her forehead and hair, soothing her.

On top of her numerous injuries, she was also moderately dehydrated so he had to put her on an IV. Before hooking her up, Jack dug around in her bag for something that would be easy to get her into. He found a pair of sweatpants and an Oxford shirt that definitely wasn't hers. Jack held it up, rubbing the material through his fingers. Had the Doctor swapped jumpers for dress shirts or was this something special? Though it certainly didn't seem big enough for him. This shirt was meant for a much lankier man.

The Doctor wouldn't just leave her like this, broken and alone, if he had any other choice. Jack's hands curled into fists, almost ripping the shirt in his frustration, but he realized what he was doing and released his hold.

Owen held her up while Jack dressed her, carefully buttoning the Oxford, and rolled one of the sleeves up past her elbow. Once Owen got the IV going in her arm, Suzie descended the stairs with a blanket she'd procured from somewhere and spread it across Rose's body.

"Do you love her?" Suzie asked softly.

Jack only smiled, though it faded when Rose called softly for the Doctor again. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and pulled the TARDIS key out from beneath the shirt, setting it in the space between her breasts. The key and chain gleamed in the fluorescent lights.

"Who's this doctor, then?"

"The same one I'm looking for," Jack murmured. "He's her…well, I don't even know what those two are. But they're disgustingly in love and have more unresolved sexual tension than Mulder and Scully."

"Yeah, well," Owen folded his arms and nodded to the unconscious girl. "Face, ribs, stomach, legs, forearms and biceps—she was grabbed and kicked several times at the very least. Those handprints, based on the size and shape, I'd say they're from a fully grown human male."

"I figured that part out myself."

"I think things might have changed since you last saw them." Owen said softly. "She spoke to me after she collapsed. She said, 'He's after me.'"

When he realized what Owen was implying, Jack was incensed. "No," he said firmly. "He would never, _ever_ hurt her."

Owen wisely backed off.

Jack pulled chair near the wall over to the table and sat down beside her. He held her hand and prepared to wait here until she woke. He was well aware of his teammates upstairs. Owen and Suzie were no doubt exchanging theories about Rose and him. Tosh was probably on the computer, monitoring the sweep and doing other "official" work while discreetly looking up information about Rose Tyler. Jack knew she wouldn't find much. Just some school records, her medical history, a few news stories about Henrick's blowing up, and the case information from the year Rose went missing because she'd gone with the Doctor and he'd miscalculated their return.

When Owen returned several hours later to check on her, Suzie and Tosh came with him. The women remained above, leaning against the railing to observe. They'd seen him comfort people before, but not like this, never like this. Tosh had found absolutely nothing in the records that linked them together.

Rose was just a kid from a council estate in London, fatherless, jobless, with nothing remarkable about her whatsoever. He was a mysterious Torchwood agent, easily ten years her senior, with a secret past. There was no indication that they'd ever crossed paths, he'd never mentioned her, his trips to London were infrequent and someone from her background couldn't just afford a jaunt to Cardiff, and yet he stood guard over her now like she was the most precious thing to him.

"Hold on a tick," Owen murmured, holding up her right arm. "Now that's odd."

"What?" Jack asked sharply.

Owen put his fingers on the edge of her blackened eye. "This is better than it was a few hours ago," he explained. "Look, see, it's faded."

Jack's breath caught in his throat and his eyes flicked across her body. He was right. Her bruises were fading, the wounds on her body already well on their way to being mended. She was healing almost as fast as him.

"That's impossible," he said aloud.

"Yeah, well, tell that to her."

Jack smiled, his eyes crinkling. "We have. Multiple times."

Owen frowned, biting the inside of his lip thoughtfully, then went over to the table where her test results were strewn. "I got some odd readings earlier, might explain it. She's got some weird alterations inside her. Can't really identify them all, we don't have the right technology, but her lymphocytes are mutated."

"Mutated?"

"I've compared all of the readings to our known records, and one of them seems to be artron energy. According to the file, artron energy is absorbed when someone—"

"Travels through time," Jack finished. "Yeah, I know. It can also be absorbed through contact with someone who has travelled through time. I think you'll find we all have had exposure to it."

Owen raised his eyebrows. "She's barely out of school. How could a kid be exposed to that kind of radiation on this scale?"

"She runs with a strange crowd," he said. "Let's just leave it at that for now."

Rose remained asleep throughout the night. Jack sat beside her in the infirmary even as the others left for their respective homes. When Suzie, Owen, and Tosh came back in the morning they found her still unconscious and Jack dozing in the chair with his head near hers. It was as vulnerable as they'd ever seen him and Tosh loathed herself for having to wake him up.

He jumped, surprised, but she'd been careful so she hadn't completely startled him, and he immediately looked to make sure Rose was still there. Her bruises had faded even more, her cuts and scrapes scabbed or pink.

"Jack, go. Wash up, use the loo, grab a bite." Tosh ordered.

"I'm not leaving her."

"G'on," Owen said as he jogged down the stairs. "I'll keep an eye on her."

After he'd gone, Owen stood over Rose Tyler for a minute or so, just looking at her and her faded wounds, and wondering how bad they'd been when she first got them if they'd already been healing when he'd first seen her. He gave his head a shake and adjusted the blankets around her, checked her IV, then went to give her scans another look.

And because the universe likes to be cruel, their sleeping guest chose that moment when no one was looking to stir.

The first thing Rose realized was that she was not in her bed. It was far too uncomfortable for that. It wasn't even a bed at all. The surface under her fingers was cool, smooth metal. Her heart sped up almost immediately and she forced herself to calm down, peeking her eyes open to get a clue of her surroundings. She was in a white, stone room, with an overhead light glaring down at her. It smelled sterile, like a hospital, but this didn't look like any hospital she'd ever been in.

She raised her head to the side just enough so she could see to the left and right. There appeared to be two sets of stairs on either side of the circular room, and at least six numbered doors underneath. Several tables and carts carried various medical supplies—including syringes, scalpels, and one scary looking saw—and she spotted a man in a white coat standing on the stairs looking at an x-ray.

She licked her lips and did a quick survey of her body. She was still sore and it felt like she had stitches in a few places, plus a cast on her arm and an IV in the other.

She looked at the man again, wondering if she should get his attention, when a folder on one of the tables caught her eye. Or, rather, the word stamped on the folder in bright red ink.

**TORCHWOOD**

Rose made up her mind then. Whoever that man was, he was not her friend. She had no idea how she'd gotten here, but she was not going to let them use her to get at the Doctor. Keeping one eye on the man, she reached over with her good hand and carefully pulled the IV from her arm, biting back a hiss of pain.

The man turned around and saw her awake. She froze and they stared at each other for a silent second. "Oh," he said.

Flinging the blanket off of her, Rose leaped off the bed, catching herself on the closest cart. She grabbed the nearest thing that looked like a potential weapon, a decent-sized scalpel (the saw was unfortunately on the other side of the bed), as the man in the white shouted for her to stop. Shoving the cart out of the way she jumped, pulling on the railing above her, and swung her legs up onto the stairs. Ducking underneath, she pushed herself to her feet bolted upwards.

"Wait!" the man shouted, racing up the other set stairs.

Rose was fast, but he'd been closer to the entrance and he beat her there. She slowed, catching herself on the wall, and raise the scalpel threateningly. Two women appeared behind him a moment later, wide-eyed, and Rose gritted her teeth. She wasn't going down without a fight.

"It's all right, Rose, we're not going to hurt you," the Asian woman said.

They knew her name, even worse. What else did they know?

Rose's body positively hummed with energy, eyes bright yellow, and her hand tightened around the scalpel while the other one curled into a fist. They watched her with trepidation. If these people thought they could keep her here then they had another thing coming, especially if it was the Doctor they were after.

They were at a stalemate, a wild thing ready to fight for her freedom and three humans who didn't dare strike at her or let her leave lest they bring Jack's wrath on them.

"MOVE!" Rose snarled at them.

"Please, calm down," the Asian woman pleaded again.

"Last chance," she warned, coiled to spring.

"ROSE! Stop!"

Rose's entire body froze as an achingly familiar voice echoed through the building. Her eyes widened as she spotted him over their shoulders sprinting towards them, wearing a t-shirt, slacks with suspenders, and a pair of boots, looking so much like the man she remembered that it hurt. No, wait. It actually did hurt to look at him.

Suddenly memories from the last forty-eight hours came rushing back and the scalpel slipping from her fingers. The heat in her body faded, her eyes lost their primal gleam, and she was left a trembling girl, separated from everything and everyone one she loved, save for the man shoving past the three blocking her exit. With a small cry, Rose threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck, and hid her face in his shoulder as his arms encircled her.

"It's okay, Rose, you're safe now. I promise," he murmured. One hand pressed firmly against the small of her back to keep her upright and the other rubbed soothing circles on her back.

After a minute of silence she leaned her head back to look at his face and smiled. "Hello."

"Hello," he replied.

"Hello…"

"I thought we weren't going to start that again."

She laughed and Jack grinned at the lovely sound he hadn't heard in so long. He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "It's good to see you, Rose."

"You too, Jack—no, wait, hold on." She held up her hand. "What is this place? And why is the word Torchwood stamped on a folder down there?"

"This is Torchwood," he said.

Rose jerked sharply and shoved at him, breaking his grip and backing away until she hit the railing on the stairs. "You're with _them_?!"

"You didn't know?" Jack asked.

"Of course not!"

"Then how'd you even know to come here?"

"Because you told me to," she retorted. "You said if I was ever in a pinch in this decade to go to the tourist office by the waterfront on the Plass. You just forgot to mention the whole Torchwood thing. Although," she folded her arms and looked away from him, "considering what Torchwood is, I can see why." Rose shook her head. "I thought you'd changed, Jack."

"I have!" he insisted.

"Oh yeah?" she snapped. "Because it looks to me like you're working for the same bloody organization that nearly destroyed the—" she slammed her lips together, realizing what she'd nearly revealed. "The Torchwood at Canary Warf nearly killed us," she said through her teeth. "I lost my mum because of them."

Something like fury flashed in Jack's eyes but he kept his face smooth and voice pleading."That's not us, please Rose, believe me, we're not like that. Look at me, Rose, please."

Of course this Jack wouldn't be used to her being reluctant to look at him yet. She drew in a long breath through her teeth and raised her head. He nodded once.

"I cut as many ties as I could with Torchwood One in London years ago. They do their thing; we do ours. We're different."

"'If it's alien it's ours?'" she quoted.

"Ah…" He rubbed the back of his neck. That bit remained the same, then.

"And what about that _special_ bit of the charter, eh?"

"Rose," he sighed. "If we were going to go after him, we'd have got him the last time he was here. And, obviously…"

She nodded, "Good. Otherwise, I'd have to slap you."

Jack grinned.

"Okay, excuse me!" the other man, Owen Harper, interrupted loudly. Rose was grateful for the opportunity to look at someone other than Jack. "Will someone please explain to me what the hell is going on?"

"Good question," Jack said. "We have a lot to talk about, don't we?"

Rose nodded.

"Alright, then, first things first, meet the team. You already met Owen and you can thank him for patching you up. This is Toshiko Sato, our computer specialist, and she's probably already looked up every single bit of official information that still exists about you." Jack smiled at the suddenly embarrassed Asian woman. Rose narrowed her eyes. "And, finally, Suzie Costello, second-in-command and our weapons expert. You can thank her for the blanket."

She regarded each of them carefully. "You trust them?"

"With my life."

That was good enough at the moment. "Alright, then. Hello, my name's Rose Tyler."

"Yeah, we know." Owen walked towards her. "Perhaps you could explain something to me. You were hurt pretty badly when you got here. Several broken bones and sprains, mild dehydration, and more cuts and bruises than I care to count. But you're rate of recovery…" he gestured up and down her body, shaking his head. "It's off the charts. By all accounts you shouldn't be even able to be standing."

"Well, 'm tough," she replied nonchalantly. Like hell she was going to start explaining _that _to a stranger who worked for Torchwood.

Owen glared. "No, this is not anything to do with being tough. Your body's healing capabilities—they're unprecedented. You were black and blue when you arrived, and now you're—"

"Pink an' yellow? Yeah, I get that sometimes."

"For a human body to heal that quickly on its own…it's impossible," he said through his teeth.

"Well, I like impossible." She smiled at Jack, expecting a smile in return, but all she received was that frown that meant he was worried and expecting trouble. Her smile faded and she looked down.

"The scans picked up traces of several different types of energies in you. We recognize the artron energy—it's a basic sort of background radiation absorbed from travelling through the Vortex—but there's two other types that we didn't recognize." Jack said. "Artron improves the immune system but it doesn't effect the body's regenerative abilities. It's one of the others, isn't it?"

She bit her lip. "Yeah."

"Do you know what it is?"

"Yeah, 'course I do." she raised her head. "Soon as we realized somethin' was off he ran every sort of test he could think of."

"And?"

Rose pressed her lips firmly together and glanced at the three people behind Jack. He put his hand on her shoulder and she covered his hand with hers. "What happened?"

"Whatcha mean?" she asked. "A lot of things have happened…will happen…"

"Who hurt you? It wasn't…_please_ tell me it wasn't him."

Rose hesitated and glanced over his shoulder again. Jack nodded, turning. "Alright, people, party's over. Owen, clean up in here then order some pizza. Sausage and pineapple for her. Tosh, run that sweep again, anything not human. Suzie, you're on desk duty."

They didn't seem too pleased at being dismissed, but none of them complained, except for Owen who grumbled irritably under his breath. Jack smiled at Rose, took her by the hand, and led her towards his office.

* * *

**The Review Monster says, "Feed meeeee."  
**


	2. Lost Girl

**RIP Robin Williams.**

* * *

Rose sat in the chair in front of Jack's desk, hugging her legs to her chest. Jack sat across from her, leaning back in his chair. They stared at each other—or, rather, Jack stared, and Rose looked at him for as long as she could, looked away, then looked back again—a thousand questions burning between them and neither knowing where to begin. Finally, Jack cleared his throat and leaned forward, folding his arms across his chest and resting on his elbows.

"That shirt." He nodded to her. "Not yours, is it?"

She looked down at it then shook her head. "It's the Doctor's. But if it was in the backpack I had then the TARDIS put it there.

"I wonder why it'd do that." He mused with a straight face belied only by the mischievous glint in his eyes. Rose only shrugged in response but a smug grin slowly spread across his face anyway.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Oh, shut up."

"I didn't say anything."

"Yeah but you were thinkin' it."

He laughed, unabashed. "What the hell took you two so long? The tension in that ship nearly drove me crazy back then. I'm surprised the TARDIS herself didn't go nuts from it. Good for you, Rosie. Though, if you two ever decide you want to spice things up, give me a call."

"Jack!"

Jack grinned, unabashed. "Last I checked, though, the Doctor only wore jumpers."

"Well, he's…he's a different man now."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "He regenerated?"

"You know about that?"

"Everyone in the Agency heard tales of the Time Lords. Legend had it that when one of them was close to death he or she could rewrite their entire cellular structure and, essentially, create a new body for themselves." Jack smiled at her. "But you're one of the last people I need to explain that to, right? When was did it happen?"

Rose looked at the clock on the wall. "Right after the Gamestation. I…did something, Jack. I wanted to save you both, and I did, but the power was gonna kill me so the Doctor had to turn right around and save me afterwards. He regenerated just after we left. Scared the hell outta me!"

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, it's alright now." She smiled at him. "I got to fall in love with him all over again. I've got a few pictures of him in my wallet; I'll show you later. If it's with me, that is."

She frowned, wondering just what exactly what was in that backpack. It had simply materialized next to her while she was hiding in her room and she'd shouldered it without even looking inside, trusting the TARDIS's judgment. Though she wasn't sure if the ship would've considered her wallet a necessity. She hoped so. She _really_ hoped so. With her mobile crushed in the fighting, her wallet would be the only place she had pictures of him.

"But…he…I mean, Rose, what did you do?" Jack asked, drawing her back into the present. "On the Gamestation, after you left, the Daleks attacked. They exterminated everyone, even me."

"I—" her lips trembled "—know. I'm the one that brought you back."

Jack stared at her for a long minute, eyes wide, before he slumped back in his chair in shock. He exhaled once, his mouth open in an 'o' of disbelief. His head shook back and forth slowly, an action he didn't even seem to be aware of. She wondered if ever in all his decades of wondering, imagined it could've been her. That little Rosie, the smiling 21st century Earth girl, had been able to reach beyond the threshold and pull him back into life, and not just once but again and again over the years that followed.

"You?" His voice was horse, like he hadn't spoken in weeks.

Rose nodded.

"But…how?"

She shrugged. "I dunno. I can't remember much but I remember that I felt you dead and I couldn't bear it. So I just—I just made you not dead anymore. I wanted to bring them all back, everyone in the satellite, but the TARDIS stopped me. Good thing too, I suppose, considering that you can't…." she glanced up at him.

"You know." It wasn't a question.

"Yeah."

Jack licked his lips, pressing them together tightly, and stared at papers on his desk in silence. She waited nervously for him to speak again. The Jack she'd met before hadn't seemed angry with her but he'd also been protecting the timelines. "I just have one question." He raised his head. "Did you know what would happen to me?"

Rose shook her head in denial. "No. I didn't even know I'd done it until very recently. The Doctor never said. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—well, I did, but not forever."

"Can you fix me?"

She shook her head again. "I don't have that power anymore."

"Could you possibly…get it again?" Jack asked hopefully.

"Yeah, I reckon I could. But even if I did…it'd probably end the same way."

"You mean you'd die?"

"Yeah."

"Then don't you dare," he ordered, suddenly very serious. "Never the mind the fact he would kill me for it, you _saved_ me. You convinced him to give me a chance, and you made me better." He reached his hand across the desk, palm open for hers, and she slowly lowered her hand into his. He squeezed it tightly, reassuringly. "And then you saved me again. I don't want you to ever feel sorry for bringing me back. Do you understand me?"

She nodded.

"Good."

Rose smiled in relief as the weight she'd been carrying since she heard the Doctor talking to Jack was lifted from her shoulders. "Thank you."

A piece of his conversation with the Doctor in that room came to mind so she added hastily, "But the Doctor might."

"That's what I've been thinking," he agreed. "Remind me to ask him next time I see him."

_He doesn't know_, she thought. He still didn't realize she was from his future yet.

"Though, out of curiosity, what _did_ you do? He said he sent you home in the TARDIS."

"Tricked me into going home, is more like it," she growled. "But I wasn't havin' it. You know how the TARDIS is alive and everything? Well, you see, back then, I couldn't talk to her, not like I can now. So I figured if I could open the Heart like Margaret did we'd be able to communicate, I could convince her to take me back. So I looked into her, and she looked into me. I absorbed her Heart, Jack. The Heart of the TARDIS: the Time Vortex, the huon particles, _everything_. It was all in me."

A funny look appeared on her face, as if she was remembering something half-forgotten. "I turned the Daleks into dust. All of them, every single last one, even the Emperor. I scattered the words Bad Wolf throughout time and space. Bad Wolf isn't just a random phrase: it's a name. I'm the Bad Wolf. Me an' the TARDIS together. The Doctor took most of it out, but a few huon particles got left behind. That's what Owen's scans picked up. I've got a bit of the Heart in my body and her mind is bonded with mine."

She smiled at him and for a moment, her eyes flickered. They were wild and yellow and she was Rose but she was someone—some_thing_ else entirely. He heard the song, the song that always welcomed him back life, it flowed through his mind making his entire body feel completely weightless, like he could float away and gravity would not stop him. She blinked, or he did, or maybe they both did, and the connection was broken. Her eyes were normal and the song was gone, leaving Jack unsettled, but also strangely at ease. Rose looked equality disconcerted and she sucked in a sharp breath. He swallowed and tried to think of some way to break the sudden tension between them. He settled for humor.

"And neither of you could bear to just let me die." He joked. "It's the jaw, right? Once seen, always yearned for."

Just like that the ice was broken and Rose Tyler grinned at him, really grinned, her tongue poking out from between her teeth, and, oh, how he'd missed that smile. "Once you go Jack…"

"You never go back!" He laughed and she did too, her legs slipping off the chair as she relaxed, and it was just like old times again. Except they were missing one crucial member of their trio. This seemed to occur to both of them at about the same time and their laughter slowly died into quiet chuckles and sighs.

"Who hurt you, Rose?" he asked.

Rose bit her lip. "Um, see, this is where things get tricky. I'm from the future, Jack," she said. "Your personal future, I mean. In about…a year or two, I think, we land up there to refuel again."

"And I go with you?"

"Yep."

"For how long?"

"A bit."

"A bit," he repeated flatly.

"Timelines, Jack," she reminded him.

"Alright, so you can't tell me how long I'm with you before you get…here. Anything you think you can risk telling me? Like who hurt you and where he is so I can kill him?"

"His name's the Master," she said and flinched, expecting the universe to go boom. When nothing happend, she continued on, "and he's…an alien. Completely mad and a murderer and he wants me."

"Why?"

"To get at the Doctor. That's why I'm here. He tried to take the TARDIS with me in it and I tried to stop him. And I was winnin' at first, but then…well, you saw what I looked like when I came in. You can probably guess."

Jack clenched and unclenched his fists. "Yeah, I can."

"I know he hates the Doctor. I don't know why but the TARDIS made it very clear that they are old enemies."

"But how did you escape?"

"The TARDIS knocked him around for a bit so I could crawl away and then she hid me in my room until he went in to look for me, and then she put my door right next to the console room and I just started runnin'. I realized I was in Cardiff so I came here like you told me to. Will tell me to. You get what I mean."

"He's still after you, isn't he?"

"Probably. He knows how the Doctor feels about me. I'd be his best weapon."

"So you came here because I told you to come here, because that me already knew all of this and knew you had to come. Nice simple casualty loop. Alright, next question: where is the Doctor?"

"Somewhere out there with you and Martha, with these _things_ coming at you, and no way out because that," she nodded to his Vortex Manipulator, "is broken. And no one around you has any means of time travel."

"Shit."

"And I can't go home to Mum or Mickey, either, because their future is my past. I can't contact any of my old friends for the same reason. My phone's broken. The Master has the TARDIS. You are literally the only thing I've got, Jack, and I may be stuck here for the rest of my life." She slumped in the chair, all the energy seeming to drain out of her, and Jack had no idea what to say.

Suzie rang down to inform them that pizza had arrived and Rose stood up without another word and walked out of his office. Toshiko and Owen looked up from their stations, which unfortunately happened to be located right outside Jack's office, and stared at her. She walked past them without saying anything and dropped onto the couch against the wall, underneath a bold black **TORCHWOOD**. They continue to watch her until their gazes become too much and she snapped at them.

"Stop lookin' at me!"

Jack she knew, Jack she could tolerate. He still had a lot of explaining to do about his involvement in Torchwood, but from the way he spoke he wasn't against the Doctor. Those two, however, Owen and Toshiko and that other woman, Suzie, she didn't know about them. Did they view the Doctor as en enemy to the crown? Would they treat them like Torchwood One had? Jack trusted them but she wasn't sure she did.

Owen's eyebrows shot towards his hairline. "You know, I think I liked you better unconscious."

She glowered and looked down at her chest where her TARDIS key hung out in the open for the world to see. She held it in her hands, curling her body into a ball, and pressed the key to her lips. Toshiko knew everything from her old address to her school records and Owen had probably seen more of her body than most people. She just wanted to curl up and cry somewhere these invasive people couldn't see any more.

Rose avoided the others for the rest of the day the best she could. She alternated between sitting on the couch and staring into space, dozing, and talking with Jack in his office about trivial things—how'd they been, what they'd been doing, who Martha was, where the chain around her neck came from—and then not so trivial things like the rift and this Torchwood. They'd severed almost all ties to Torchwood One when he took over, but they were still required to submit occasional reports, they communicated about any potential issues concerning each other, and were supposed to report any sightings of the Doctor or his blue police box. Rose bristled until Jack assured her that only he knew about that last bit.

He offered her a place with Torchwood, though she wasn't sure if she should accept it. She was the Doctor's companion and practically his wife. It was just all sorts of wrong to work for a company that at its core was designed to eliminate him. But she was stuck here in this time, on this planet, with a homicidal Time Lord after her. What else could she do? Where could she go? Not to UNIT, for sure. They were the Doctor's allies, but they were military and she wasn't that kind of person. At least Torchwood had Jack.

"I'll think about it," she decided.

"Alright, but in the mean time you should stay here." He said seriously. "Don't leave without me with you. I make a great human shield—ow! It was just a joke. Mostly."

There were certain things she couldn't tell the team, though. His age, for starters, was strictly secret, which was fine because she didn't even know how old he'd been when they first met. His immortality was also a big no-no, as were his origins, and anything to do with what the device on his wrist actually was. So they came up with a vague backstory for how they met—London a few years back and they stopped an alien plague. He gave her permission to tell them she'd traveled in time and space, and how much she wanted them to know about the Doctor was up to her.

At five o'clock, Toshiko ran the sweep again for anything alien in a ten-mile radius. One minute later the computer bleeped a warning. "Jack!" she shouted. "Jack we've got something new!"

Rose, who had been sitting on the couch behind Toshiko, leaped to her feet at once. "Where?"

Jack emerged from his office, covering the distance between the door and her desk in three long strides. "What is it, Tosh?"

"Not sure, but it's alien, and it's close."

"How close?"

"It's right up on Bute," she reported, fingers flying across the keys. "I'm gonna try and find a good CCTV feed, but that area isn't heavily monitored."

Jack looked up at the ceiling. "Practically standing on top of us," he murmured.

Rose walked forward on surprisingly sturdy legs so she could get a good look of the screen over the computer genius's shoulder. There it was, a tiny red dot blinking on a map of Cardiff, right across from the Plass. Tosh brought up two different camera feeds and zoomed in on a large divider in the middle of a street with a traffic light on one side and a blue signpost in the center. People crossed through, stopping only to wait for a break in the cars, then continued on, except for one man.

He had brown hair and he was wearing t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of boots and he was just standing there, gazing around with arrogant confidence. Like he knew he was close to what he desired and had no doubt he would get it. She knew that face. It had leered and sneered at her. The hands hanging at his sides had grabbed her, hit her, shoved her, with the sole purpose of making her scream.

The room around her began to shake and it was only after Jack put his arms around her did she realize she was shaking, not the Hub.

"It's him!" she gasped. "Oh, God, that's _him_!"

Jack growled deep in his chest, low and dangerous. "Wait here, Rose. Owen, with me."

"No!" Rose cried, clinging to his shirt even as he tried to push her away. "No, you can't go out there! He'll see you!"

"That's the point."

"No, you can't!" She shifted her grip to his arms. "You don't understand!"

"Give me one good reason, Rose Tyler."

"Because even if you shoot him he won't stay down," she told him, digging her nails into his arms. "He'll just come right back and that is _not_ something you want happening in the middle of Cardiff."

Jack's eyes widened. "Are you saying he's a—"

"Yes," she said urgently. "The only other one. That's how he was able to beat me. I wasn't just winning, Jack, I'd _won._"

Jack looked at the man on the screen again and for a moment he stopped breathing.

Owen leaned back in his chair, waiting to see how this would unfold. He was used to Jack being infuriatingly cryptic about, well, everything. Figures this 'old friend' of his would be, too. And if there wasn't any proof of any past relationship between the two, there was now in the way they understood each other, completing unfinished sentences in their minds, each following the other's train of thought.

_Just what we bloody need around here, people talking in code, _he thought.

"Does the Doctor know?" Jack asked. "What he is?"

"Yes. They've got history, remember?"

"What would he want me to do?"

"He'd want you to keep me safe."

It was true, the Doctor _would_ want Jack to keep her out of harms way, even if she would prefer to be in the thick of things. At the moment, however, she wanted to go down as deep into the Hub as she could, put as many feet of stone and earth as she could between herself and the Master, and hide. Rose Tyler, hiding like a coward. But the truth was she was scared of the Master. Terrified. It wasn't just that he'd hurt her physically; after all, she was no stranger to pain. But he was a _Time Lord_.

She'd seen the Doctor topple governments with mere words, scare off enemies by just lifting his sonic screwdriver, and grab those on the precipice of death and pull them back. He'd gone against Daleks to save her. And for the Master to be an old rival of the Doctor, that meant he was equally powerful, but she would bet everything that he didn't share the Doctor's aversion to murder.

She didn't want to go near him. She didn't want Jack near him. She didn't particularly like any of his team, but she didn't want them near the psychotic Time Lord either. Not without the Doctor.

Jack gritted his teeth and she could see he wasn't entirely convinced.

"He knows about you, Jack, and he knows we're close. If you go out and confront him then he'll know where I am. We can't fight him, not on our own."

"He doesn't look like much," Owen remarked.

"Owen, you saw how I looked when I came in?" She nodded to the man on the screen. "Him. And he was weak at the time."

Jack looked at the screen again. The Master was still standing there, almost as if he knew they were watching him.

"Jack, please_,_" Rose said softly, leaning in to whisper in his ear. "He could kill you for good and then where would we be?"

His Adam's apple bobbled and he exhaled through his teeth. "Fine. But if he comes here, we engage. Tosh, watch him." He headed into his office, pulling out his mobile to warn Suzie.

Rose stood and stared at the screen for a solid minute then she retreated to the couch but she still kept her eye on him. The Master did not venture any closer to the Plass but the CCTV, zoomed in as close to his face as possible, caught his smirk before he turned and walked away. He knew, she realized. He knew where she was but he hadn't come any closer. Why?

That night she found it impossible to sleep. The couch was comfortable enough and the sheets, blanket, and pillow Jack produced from somewhere made it better…but it wasn't anything like her bed. The back of the couch was something she could curl up against but it didn't return the cuddle or wrap its arms around her or make her feel any sort of safe. Her body ached, her emotions were all over the place, and the TARDIS was buzzing with all manner of negative emotions in the back of her mind. So she spent most of the night drifting in and out of a doze and staring around at the Hub. She knew Jack had a room beneath his office and if she really needed to she could go to him. But she didn't want to wake him. He'd been dealing with her and her mess all day and he deserved a break.

The next day passed as quietly as the last. Even more so, actually, since the Master did not make a reappearance. After Owen removed the stitches she no longer needed and she took a shower, Rose Tyler watched Torchwood work. She watched and listened to everything, speaking little, and tried to absorb it all. Rose wondered if this was how Martha felt sometimes. The four members of Torchwood III were an established group with their own, stories, jokes, dynamics, rules, and strategies that she wasn't a part of.

Owen and Suzie were sleeping together. She was fairly certain about this. She knew how two people acted around each other if they were secretly (or not so secretly) shagging each other's brains out. Whenever the two of them were anywhere together, talking or working, Tosh would make a point of looking at anything but them. Sometimes, if they got too loud, she would leave the room entirely, disappearing into the bowels of the Hub that Jack told Rose to not venture into without an escort. Jack didn't seem to have any romantic attachments to any of them and she'd never seen him go so long without flirting. It was a bit disconcerting.

Three days passed in this manner. At night she only slept out of sheer exhaustion but never for a full eight hours. During the day she felt like an outsider looking in, unable to help without stepping on someone's toes. They all thought she was a kid, barely twenty, and certainly not capable of helping them, well, except for Jack. He knew she could handle herself, knew she knew more about aliens than any of the others, and he knew she could defend herself because he'd taught her how to long ago. But to Suzie, Owen, and Toshiko she was Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf was hunting her.

They didn't know _she_ was the Bad Wolf. She had swallowed time and merged with the TARDIS, eliminated countless Daleks, and killed the Devil himself, but if she told them that they'd think she was mad.

If she was going to remain with this Torchwood for any length of time she knew she had to prove herself. Jack could put her up on the biggest pedestal in the world if he wanted, but they wouldn't believe any of it, not really, until they saw it. So she decided to make herself useful. She wouldn't risk leaving the Hub on her own, even if Jack would let her, so she busied herself in their underground base. The first thing she did was clamp down on her sour mood and smile at each of them.

Jack nearly threw a party when she brought him a cuppa in the conference room just the way he'd liked it back on the TARDIS—it'd been well over a hundred years for him, after all—and he kissed her full on the mouth. Then, of course, she swatted his arm and he started tickling her. Rose's shrieks and giggles echoed throughout the Hub. She tried to escape but he had her, and when she managed to wriggle away he caught her again. Thankfully her cries had brought the other members of Torchwood up to investigate.

"What on Earth are you two doing?" Suzie demanded, standing outside the conference room with her hands on her hips.

"Help!" Rose squealed, smacking at his hands.

"Jack, let the poor girl go."

After another wiggle of his fingers he released her and she skittered away, holding her sides as the last of her giggles died and she shot him a reproachful look. Jack grinned, unabashed.

"What the hell was that all about?" Suzie asked.

"Are you children?" Owen added disapprovingly.

"Rose made tea!" Jack said by way of explanation.

"So you decided to attack her?"

"Yes, and I got her laughing, finally. I was starting to get worried about you, Rosie. Now, let's see if you still got it."

He picked the mug off the table and brought it to his lips and took a hearty sip. He made a show of smacking his lips, looking down at the cup, before nodding. "Yep. Still got it. I swear no one can make tea like this woman here." He told his team.

"The Doctor's gotten a lot better," Rose informed him. "You'd be surprised."

"That man couldn't make a banana milkshake."

"He's not that hopeless. Well, not anymore."

"Can I give it a go?" Suzie asked.

"What?"

"The tea, can I try?"

"Well, yeah, s'pose so. How do you like it?"

She ended up making tea for all three of them and, thankfully, their reactions were a lot less physical than Jack's. Rose beamed at their compliments, even more when Owen mentioned he usually hated tea. However, she was hopeless when it came to making coffee, and she didn't much like the stuff, anyway.

She straightened up the mess around the main room. She listened to Tosh's theories about a few devices they'd recovered from the office of their former mayor, one Margaret Blaine (who was actually an alien wearing the skin of the real Margaret as a disguise!), and offering a few suggestions. Though she didn't do that for long because it was too much like listening to the Doctor, but also entirely different.

Jack put her to work monitoring the emergency reports and told her to look for things that warranted their attention: unusual incidents or murders, weird things running around—basically anything that belonged in a _Men in Black _movie_._ It wasn't exactly the most riveting of tasks but it kept her busy.

Owen offered to get Chinese food around dinnertime and she smiled when she heard Jack order for her. Of all the things he could remember over a hundred and fifty years, he remembered what kind of Chinese food she liked. When he came back, Tosh brought their portions over to the terminal where Rose was sitting. Rose smiled and took the box of fried rice and two egg rolls. They sat together in silence, eating their food and keeping an eye and ear on the scanner. It seemed that Tosh wasn't sure how to start a conversation so Rose decided as she bit into an eggroll that it was up to her.

"You know," she said, swallowing. "I've had real egg rolls in China. They taste nothing like this."

"You've been to China?" Toshiko asked in surprise.

Rose nodded. "I've been to a lot of places. I'm a traveller."

"Who do you travel with? That doctor man you two talk about?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

"And you an' him are…?"

Rose smiled and took another bite of the egg roll.

"So, how do you know Jack?" Tosh asked, gesturing at her with her fork. "He's never mentioned you 'til now."

"No, I expect he wouldn't," she murmured. With a sly grin she added, "But then, Jack's a mystery man."

"Where did you meet?"

Rose popped the rest of the egg roll into her mouth and chewed slowly. "London, few years back. Not long after me an' the Doctor met. He was havin' a bit of trouble with an alien…virus of sorts. We helped him set it right. Piece a cake."

"You do seem pretty comfortable with all this," Tosh noted.

Rose arched her eyebrows. "Jack says you looked me up. Was he right?"

Tosh looked embarrassed. "I, um, well I… Sorry."

Rose waited.

"I was curious," she admitted. "We don't exactly have girls showing up like you did every day. You didn't see his face, Rose, when Owen told him you were up there. I figured you had to be someone pretty important."

"No such luck, though?"

"Well, at least you exist."

"What do you mean?"

Tosh glanced over her shoulder to make sure he wasn't anywhere nearby, then murmured, "Jack doesn't exist. I've looked him up, we all have. There's only one American Jack Harkness on record, but he was a soldier from World War II, and he went MIA back in '41."

Rose had to force herself not to laugh. "Oh, well. Definitely couldn't be him, then."

"No, but that just makes it weirder. No record of him, whatsoever." Tosh peered at her. "Do you know much about him, then?"

She arched her eyebrows. "Is that why you came to talk to me, Tosh? Hopin' I'll tell you more about him?" She glanced over Tosh's shoulder across the room at Suzie who looked away quickly, confirming what she'd suspected. "They put you up to it?"

Tosh pursed her lips and started to go. "I'm sorry."

"No," Rose held up her hand. "Don't, please. Stay."

Tosh frowned indecisively then lowered herself back into the chair.

"I'm not always like this, I swear. I just…it's been a rough few days. I can't ever go home again, I've got a psychotic alien after me, and I'm _stuck_ here—" Rose stopped talking abruptly and looked down at the rice. She scooped her spoon around the sides of the container to get at some of the stuck kernels.

"It's okay, Rose." Toshiko smiled sympathetically and touched the other woman's arm briefly. "You can talk to me."

"Yeah," she muttered. "You seem nice, Tosh, and I'd like to trust you, I really would but…you work for _Torchwood_."

"So? What's that got to do anything?"

Rose 'hmped' once. "Jack's offered me a job here."

Tosh blinked in surprise. "He's what?"

"But I don't know if I can take it," Rose went on bitterly. "I'd rather be unemployed than work for Torchwood. I hate this place. The things you've done, the things you will do...its completely—"

Rose inhaled sharply as a prickly shiver ran down her spine. A split second later, one of the computers across the room emitted a beeping sound and Tosh leaped from her chair, flying across the grating towards her terminal.

"Rift activity!" she announced.

_Okay. Prickly spine tingle equals rift activity_, Rose thought, rubbing the back of her neck as the feeling dissipated. She couldn't see this one being very useful when they had machines that could do the exact same thing.

Jack emerged from his office with his coat. "What do we got?"

"Something's come through in…" Tosh's fingers flew across the keyboard and she inhaled sharply. "Saint David's Centre."

"Can you tell what it is?"

"No, species not on record."

"Great," Jack said sarcastically, then pulled out his phone to ring Owen who was on desk duty.

The computer Rose was supposed to be monitoring blipped as a new report was brought to the front. Whoever had received the report had flagged it as something worthy of their attention. She leaned forward to better see the words on screen and set her nearly finished meal off to the side. Someone was causing a fuss at Saint David's Centre. Jack was telling Suzie to start the SUV and to prepare for an encounter with an unknown target when she found a description of what'd caused the disturbance.

"It's a humanoid male," Rose called. "Described as around six foot even, with blue and green feathers in his hair, and wings. It's makin' a scene down at the mall. Looks like it's already hurt a few people."

Jack stopped mid-sentence and his head snapped around. He stared at her for a moment as if he'd forgotten she was there then he gave his head a quick shake and was all business again. "Rose, get your shoes on, you're coming with us."

That brought her up short. "I'm what?"

"You heard me. You're not staying down here on your own. Any guests must be accompanied by a member of Torchwood at all times, that's policy."

This earned him a scowl.

"Besides," he went on. "You might be able to help."

"How could I help?"

"In the past few years, has anyone ever spoken to you that you couldn't understand?" He asked seriously.

"No, but—oh. Oh, yeah, right. Okay," Rose exhaled. "This doesn't mean I'm accepting your offer."

"This doesn't mean you have to."

Rose jumped out of the chair and raced over to the couch, her bare feet clattering against the railing, and tried to decide what to do with herself. She hadn't bothered with anything but a shower since she'd arrived. Her face was completely bare of makeup and her hair hung loose around her face. But her wounds were pretty much healed and a stunned Owen had removed the cast on her arm earlier that day. There wasn't time to put on makeup, though it would've probably made her seem a bit vain even if there was, and her hair was just going to have to stay as it was. The loose pair of sweatpants, however, had to go. She removed the sweats and shimmied into a pair of jeans, tucking her wallet into her pocket, then pulled on socks and her trainers. She smoothed down the Doctor's oxford since she refused to remove it and pulled on her gray hoodie. All in all, not a very terrifying getup, but she didn't care. If she understood Jack correctly she wasn't tagging along to terrify the poor alien who'd been displaced.

"Okay, I'm ready," she announced, looking up in time to see Jack toss something at her. Rose reached up reflexively and caught the object, turning it over in her hands and nearly dropping it when she realized it was a gun in a holster. She looked up in surprise. "Jack—"

Jack stood in the doorway to his office, pulling his coat on. "You do know how to use one, right?"

"Well, yeah, but—"

"Good," he said, straightening the collar. "I don't want to have to be worried about you not being able to defend yourself. He's not here to protect you, Rose."

Rose wanted to shout that she _didn't_ need him to defend her, thank you very much, but that would be a lie. Sometimes she got herself in too deep and he had to rush in to save her like the stupid ape she was. Or sometimes there wasn't anything she could do but sit back and watch and she hated that more than anything. She strapped the gun to her waist without further protest but she had absolutely no plans on using it.


	3. Po

**Junior year of college, let's go. Woo.**

**Edit: apologies. Somehow, the version of this I had written a while back got posted instead of the edited version from a few weeks ago.**

* * *

The ride to the Centre was uncomfortable for Rose. She was crammed into the back seat with Tosh and Owen while Suzie got to ride up front with Jack. The members of Torchwood were talking back and forth, though mostly it was Jack just giving orders and the others arguing or agreeing, and she kept silent. It was a strange feeling, being the odd one out. Whenever they had others onboard, Rose had always felt that she was central to things, and usually when they were on alien planets and she and the Doctor were strangers, she still felt she belonged, even if only just. She always had something to do, even if it was just to stand there at the Doctor's shoulder as his Plus One to prove he wasn't alone in his cause. This lot wasn't making any effort to include her in the proceedings.

When they arrived at Saint David's Centre the place had been evacuated but crowds of people remained behind yellow tape, waiting for news, while police officers milled about, trying to seem in charge while they waited for orders. The five of them walked right past the people, the tape was lifted for them, and an officer approached to give them the rundown on the situation. Apparently they suspected it was some messed up kid (though obviously someone in the police force knew enough about odd happenings to have alerted Torchwood) was holed up somewhere up on the upper floor. He was suspected to have a set of blades because he'd scratched several people and he also didn't seem to understand a word of English or Welsh.

"And all officers have been ordered to withdraw upon your arrival, sir." The man finished.

The strange little device Tosh held beeped once. "I found him," she reported. "He's in Ruby Tuesday's."

"Oh, well, then he's definitely not getting a good first impression of Earth, is he?" Owen muttered.

"Alright. Owen, you stay out here and examine the wounded. Tosh, deal with any press. Suzie, Rose, with me. Don't worry," he told the officer. "We'll take care of it." He motioned for Rose and Suzie to follow him and they walked inside the mall.

It wasn't too shabby, Rose noted, looking around at the interior of the Centre as they headed for the escalators. She preferred alien bazars to Earth malls these days. They were always much more interesting. Her time at Henrick's left her with a sort of bitterness for department stores and she was glad they didn't have to search all of them for the alien.

Jack and Suzie drew their weapons as they stepped into the restaurant and they spotted the alien standing over the buffet, loading food onto a plate like he was having a normal day. He was tall and his skin was strange bluish white that went along quite nicely with the cyan feathers he had on his head instead of hair. Instead of a mouth and nose he had a small, straight black beak. It looked like someone had tried crossbreed a bluebird and a human and hadn't quite gotten it right. He wore a backless white tunic to accommodate a pair of furled feathery wings and a pair of loose brown trousers.

"Alright, don't move," Jack ordered.

The birdman's head snapped up in alarm and he nearly dropped his plate. "Keep away from me!" he cried. His beak wasn't entirely rigid like a normal bird's. The base of it seemed to be fleshy, like lips, and they curled downward into a frown. "I mean it, keep back!"

"Do you speak English?" Jack asked. "Do you understand the Interspace Dialect?"

"Please, just leave me alone!" he sounded so young, barely more than an adolescent.

"It's no good," Rose murmured. "Now what do you do?"

"We try to make him understand he has to come with us and if he refuses we stun him." Suzie said. "It's the only way."

"No," Jack held up his hand to quiet her. "It's not. Rose, you're up."

Rose took a deep breath, straightening her shoulders, and walked towards the alien. "Hey, it's okay," she soothed. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"What are you doing?" Suzie hissed and Jack shushed her.

"I'd like it if you didn't hurt me, either."

The birdboy narrowed his shockingly green eyes. "I can understand you. Can you understand me?"

"Yeah and I'm probably the only one in the whole world who can." She paused, letting that sink in. "I'm not going to hurt you, I just want to help you."

"And them?" He jerked his head at Jack and Suzie. "They have those…shooting things."

"They won't hurt you either, not unless you try to hurt them." She continued to walk towards him.

The birdboy looked between her and the two members of Torchwood. "I did not mean to hurt anyone. I do not even know where I am!"

"I believe you," Rose assured him. "By the way, that meat you just put on your plate–it's a chicken leg. That's a type of bird."

The birdboy looked appalled and flicked it off his plate with one of his talons. "How barbaric!"

"Culture differences, sorry. Back to business, you're on Earth. Also known as Sol 3. The planet of origin of humans."

He shook his head. "I have never heard of it. How did I get here?"

Rose huffed. "No idea, really. They just brought me along because he knew I'd be able to talk to you. What's your name?"

"Porruhk, son of Wæn and Calliss, leaders of the Northern Sun flock," he replied formally. Then with a shy smile he added, "Though you may call me Po if you wish."

"So that makes you some sort of…prince?"

"I suppose so, yes," Porruhk nodded.

"And what planet are you from?"

"Flane."

Rose turned to Jack. "His name's Porruhk and he's a prince of Flane."

Jack whistled, holstering his gun, and looked the alien up and down. "Wow. You're a long way from home, buddy."

"What did he say?" Po asked.

"That, ah," Rose bit her lip nervously. "He says you're a long way from home."

"Tell him he has to come with us." Jack instructed.

"Wait a second!" Suzie exclaimed. "She's talking to it! You're _talking_ to it!"

"'He,' actually."

"B-but _how_?"

Rose didn't answer her, turning back to Po. "You can't stay here, Po, you've got to come with us. I promise I'm not going to let anybody hurt you, okay?"

Po frowned. "And why should I trust you? You have yet to even tell me who you are."

"I'm Rose," she said. He tilted his head to the side expectantly and she recalled how he'd introduced himself. "Dame Rose Tyler, daughter of Peter and Jacqueline Tyler, formerly of the Powell Estate. Just call me Rose."

"It warms my hearts to meet you, Rose. Though, might I ask, what a 'Dame' is?"

"It's a title," she explained. "Not as posh as prince, mind you, but it's up there. …I'm like you, Po–trapped somewhere I don't belong. But we're going to try and help you get back."

Po looked down at his plate. "May I keep the food?"

She smiled. "Yeah, sure. Take as much as you want. They're just gonna throw it all away, anyway."

"Such a waste. Although, I do hope they will at least give those poor souls a decent pyre since they are not to be consumed." He gestured to the tin of chicken and made a face.

While Po loaded up his plate, Jack got on the coms and told Owen to finish up and bring the SUV around back and Tosh to inform the police that they'd apprehended him. Rose snagged a large hoodie out of one of the plus-size stores and helped Po slide into it. He complained about having his wings covered and let out a little cry of pain when the material slid across his back.

"Are you sensitive or something?"

"No. One of your kind pointed a shooting weapon at me when I tried to flee and something hit my wing."

"Let me see," Rose instructed. Po turned, extending his wing gingerly and Rose saw singed feathers and a milky liquid that must've been the equivalent of blood for his species. "Jack," she said loudly to get his attention. "He's been shot."

The grimness in her tone did not escape the Flanean's notice. "Is that bad?"

"That depends," Rose admitted. "I think you'll be alright, though, but I have to get this hoodie on you. We have to hide your wings and your feathers. Most people here don't know about aliens yet and if anyone sees you they'll flip."

"Flip?"

"Get freaked out? Um, they'll be scared."

"Oh," he looked downcast. "Am I really so odd to your kind?"

"'fraid so. We're not all feathery and blue."

"No, you're feather_less_ and…pink," he remarked, tucking his wing against his back. "Though, if you do not mind me saying, you are quite beautiful even without feathers."

Rose pressed her lips together but she couldn't stop a smile from showing. She gently eased the hoodie over his back and helped him slip his other arm through. He picked his plate back up and popped a slice of cantaloupe into his mouth, offering the plate to Rose, and she took a piece as well.

Po rode in the very back of the SUV on top of their equipment cases for the ride back to the hub. Now that no one was shouting and shooting at him he seemed to be enjoying himself and he chatted pleasantly with Rose the whole ride. Everyone but Jack stared at her like she'd suddenly sprouted feathers and wings herself. Po noticed and inquired if staring habitually was a trait among their species.

She laughed and said, "Sometimes." Inwardly, however, she was worried. If Po's language was something her voice box could recreate then they were hearing her speak it. If not, to them she was speaking English and he was speaking his native tongue yet they both understood each other perfectly. Neither option was any better than the other.

Po leaned towards Tosh, his head cocked to the side curiously. "This one has distinctly different features than the rest of you. Does she hail from a different flock?"

Tosh held very still, eyes wide, as if she expected to have her eyeballs pecked out at any second.

"Yeah, I suppose," Rose allowed. She wasn't sure if he understood the concept of different races within the same species. "We all do, actually."

Po leaned away and Tosh exhaled loudly. "And you have all formed a new flock? On Flane we usually belong to one flock all our lives, sometimes two, but we almost never form new flocks. Much too risky."

"Things don't work that way here," she tried to explain. "We have groups and people we're loyal to, but those shift and change all the time."

"And are these people your flock?"

Rose shook her head.

"Why are you with them, then?"

"Because I got separated from mine."

He winced as if she'd struck him. "Where are they?"

Rose sighed, resting her head against the seat. "Far away. Very far."

Po made a quiet noise that wasn't translated, a dovelike croon that sounded mournful, and put his hand (he only had three fingers instead of four, she noted) on her head. The gesture seemed like it was meant to be comforting so she didn't shake him off. Then he offered her another piece of cantaloupe.

Down in the Hub, Po remained close to Rose's side, like a chick to its mother. He gawked at everything, arms tucked protectively around his front, and jumped at every little sound.

"Toshiko," Jack ordered, pulling off his coat. "Damage control. I don't want this getting to Torchwood One." He gave Rose a long look and she wondered if she'd done something wrong. "Owen, take our guest down and see if you can't get that bullet out of his wing and run a few scans."

"Right. Come on, you," Owen patted Po on the shoulder.

Po let out a fierce screech that was not unlike an eagle's, the feathers on his head ruffling, and he made to swipe at Owen with his talons. The doctor jumped away, barely avoiding a blow to the chest, and shouted abuse at the alien who screeched right back, the hoodie tearing as he unfurled his wings aggressively.

"Stop!" Rose shouted, grabbing his arm. It wasn't probably the wisest thing to do but it was better than throwing herself between them. "Porruhk, stop!"

"He attacked me!"

_Oh. _ Culture differences, right. She'd been to planets before where a simple pat on the arm was considered an attack. She didn't like those ones because she always felt like she had to keep her hands in her pockets so as not to offend the wrong person and start an intergalactic war.

"No, he didn't. He was just trying to get your attention. If he'd wanted to attack you then he would've actually hit you."

The Flanean huffed angrily and glared at Owen for another moment before he let his feathers lie flat and he retracted his wings. Then he winced in pain. "Ah! Ow."

"See, now you've hurt yourself even more."

"How was I to know that wasn't an assault to you?" Po cried indignantly.

"I know," she assured him. "Our cultures are different, it's okay. But none of us are going to hurt you, especially Owen. He's a doctor."

"A healer, a medicine man. He's gonna fix your wing up and–"

"Okay, will someone please explain to me how the fuck she's talking with the bird?" Owen shouted, looking right at Jack.

Jack returned his gaze evenly. "Take care of your patient, Owen."

"No! I've put up with a lot of your shit, Jack, but this just about tops it all! She shows up outta nowhere with the fucking boogeyman after her, her cellular regeneration rate is off the charts, and she's got enough alien energy in her body to power every single machine in here for a month! That's more than any human could handle and live. Now I'm not going to take another fucking step until you–"

"Until I what?" Jack asked, folding his arms across his chest.

Owen took a deep breath through his clenched teeth and rubbed his hand over his mouth. "What–" he pointed at Rose "–what the _hell_ is she?"

"She's a human being," Rose snapped, folding her arms. "And she's gonna slap you if you call her a 'what' again."

"You be quiet, Blondie," he growled. "I want to hear this from Jack."

Though Po couldn't understand what was being said, he was sure he had an idea of what was going on, and figured it was probably best to just keep quiet and let the people–humans–deal with their insubordinate member on their own. But then the healer said something to Rose in a tone that didn't sound at all friendly and Po hissed a warning.

Rose glanced at him and smirked.

Jack cocked his head to the side and stared at Owen for a long minute then he said slowly, clearly, "Either see to your patient or see yourself out."

Owen's face went from furious, to shocked, to angry once more. "You're not serious."

"Oh, I'm dead serious."

Everyone seemed to hold their breath as the two men stared each other down. Finally, Owen ducked his head in submission and pressed his lips together.

Jack smiled coldly then turned to his other two employees. "Suzie, back up to the desk. Tosh, I want you to keep this out of Torchwood One's notice. We don't want them seizing him." He waited until Tosh and Suzie moved on before giving Owen another glare and returning to his office.

Owen remained where he was for a second. "Right. Right…" he nodded and rubbed the spot under his nose then gestured between them and the autopsy room. "Rose, tell–tell Beaky to come on."

He went ahead of them and Rose put her hand on Po's arm. "He's going to get the bullet out of your wing now. Come on, let's go."

"Are you sure it is safe?" Po fretted. "He seems rather aggressive."

"Nothing we can't handle. Besides, I've dealt with worse." she assured him, tugging at his arm.

He followed her obediently though the sight of the medical room and all the technology within frightened him and it took a bit of convincing to get him down the stairs. By the time she got him to sit on the table, Owen seemed to have momentarily overcome any issues he had about them and was perfectly gentle as cut off the ruined hoodie. Po made the hissing noise again and jerked away when Owen touched the area around the bullet wound. Rose hushed him soothingly while keeping one eye on Owen who was deciding how to handle this.

"Alright, tell him to lay down on his stomach," Owen ordered, turning to his tools.

"Po, he needs you to lay down on the table. On your belly," she added. Po obeyed, folding his arms under his chin, and sighed.

"You're going to need to keep him still, Rose." Owen said. "I can't use any painkillers on him until I know more about his biology, and we don't have enough time for that, so this will hurt."

"What d'you want me to do?"

"I dunno, distract him?"

Rose nodded, "Alright." She grabbed the chair and pulled it around to the head of the bed. Po's eyes followed her. They were a bright shade of green around a deep black iris and she could almost picture how they would flash in anger, much like a pair of brown eyes that she knew. She swallowed and forced herself to smile and hoped he wouldn't notice how strained it was.

"What's he going to do?" Po asked.

"He's going to get the bullet out so you can heal properly. Were you hit just the once?" He nodded. "That's good. It'll be over much quicker, then. But it's going to hurt."

"He's a healer. Can he not dull pain?"

"He could, but we don't know how your body works. He might end up hurting you more."

Po sighed again, eyeing Owen warily as the doctor approached the bed with the tools. The alien stared at the human for a long moment then slowly extended his right wing, wincing in pain as he did so. It was huge, powerful muscle and sinew covered by skin and glossy blue and green feathers, at least five feet long on its own. The feathers around the bullet wound were ragged and covered in the dried milky liquid that must have been blood.

"Tell you what, Po," Rose said, pulling the Flanean's attention away from Owen. "Why don't you tell me all about where you're from, yeah? Tell me all about Flane."

"Well it is…it is beautiful," Po began uncertainly. "Our forests are made of trees, not metal."

"So are ours. This is a city, not a forest. The forests are outside the city."

"I should like to see them."

"Later," she promised. "Keep going."

"Very well. Flane has many different regions. Some flocks migrate across the regions; some remain in one all the time. _Ah_!" he cried in pain, swiveling his head around.

"No, no, no, don't look at him. Look at me," Rose instructed. "It's going to hurt, but just focus on me, okay? Here, you hold my hand and squeeze when it hurts. Come on, tell me more."

Po returned his gaze to her and extended his hand. She grasped it firmly in hers and smiled encouragingly. Po rested his chin on his other arm and continued on. "My parents lead the Northern Sun flock. We live–_ah_–in the forests on northernmost part of the Sun Continent. The days are long and the nights are warm. The–_ow_–the migrant flocks often stop in our lands on their way across the Great Sea to the Wind Continent. When I was younger I used to dream of sneaking away with them and flying to far off lands."

"Did you ever try?"

His eyes twinkled mischievously. "Yes and we made it a league out over the Sea before the sentinels caught up with us."

"Did you get in trouble?"

"Oh yes," he sighed and yelped again.

"Keep going, Rose," Owen instructed softly. "I've almost got it all out then I have to stich the wound closed."

Rose listened raptly as Po continued to describe his home world. While he himself had never left their range, he had always listened to the tales of the travelers. Flane had five continents: Sun, Wind, Rain, Frozen, and Barren. They each had their own distinctive climates and features and native races. Porruhk's home was in a perpetual summer with forests and plains, though it wasn't tropical like the Rain Continent, which seemed to be covered in one large rainforest. The Wind continent had almost no trees, just endless fields and prairies. The Frozen Continent was an enigma as not many flocks tended to venture there and the natives barely left, though they were said to have feathers as white as the snow they lived in. The Barren Continent was a dessert and Rose couldn't help but picture vultures when he described the race from that land.

She silently promised herself that she would visit Po's home one day if–no, _when_ she was with the Doctor again.

"All done with that," Owen announced. "But I need to run some scans on him, get a few blood samples, map his biology. Keep him occupied."

Rose explained to Po what was going on the best she could and encouraged him to keep talking. He told her about his family, his mother Calliss and his father Wæn, and his little sister who'd recently hatched, Seriss.

"She inherited our mother's feather color. But sometimes in the right lighting they have a blue sheen. Her eyes are still silver, but they'll settle soon. She's so beautiful. And she already said her first word. Do you know what it was? My name," he boasted, sitting up a bit straighter, and his feathers fluffed with pride.

"I bet you were excited."

He nodded. "It was all gibberish up until then but she pointed at me and said it, clear as day! 'Po!'" Porruhk grinned proudly, like it was his daughter and not his sister, and Rose wondered with a pang if this was how she would've felt about the tiny life that had been growing in her mum's belly.

His face fell and he seemed to deflate. "I was going to teach her to fly."

"Hey, you still can one day. We'll get you home."

"You don't even know how I came to be here, Rose. How could you send me back?"

"Just because I don't know doesn't mean they don't. This is the kind of thing they do."

"And what about you? You said you lost your flock as well. Can they not get you back to them?"

"No, I have a way back but…I can't get to it. There's this–this man, this monster…he stole our ship. It's how we fly. He stole our ship while I was inside. I fought him off as best as I could, but I wasn't able to stop him. So when I realized where we'd landed, I came here to Jack."

"And your flock got left behind?"

Rose looked away and nodded.

"Which one is Jack?"

"The, ah–" a number of ways to describe him ran through her head and most of them would probably not make any sense to Po or would be completely embarrassing for Owen to overhear, so she settled with: "The one Owen was arguing with earlier."

"Is he your mate?"

Rose couldn't help but blush a bit. "Oh, no, no, no. He's not. Really, he's not. He's just an old friend of mine."

"Was he in your flock?"

She nodded. "For a time."

"And now he is in this one."

She nodded again.

"What about the rest of these humans?"

"No. They're not mine."

Po cocked his head to one side and put his hand on her head again, a gesture that seemed to be his way of comforting. "Tell me about your flock, please."

"Well," she said slowly, glancing at Owen, but he was studiously ignoring them, looking at the results of one of the scans. "My Dad died when I was a baby so I didn't really get to know him well. My Mum's…well she's…she's on another world now, with her new husband. Mate," she corrected when she noticed his blank look. "Last time I saw her she was pregnant. I don't know anything about the baby, though. I'll never see her again–it's impossible. My old friend Mickey's there, too, so I'll never see him again, either."

"Is that all?" He lifted his hand from her head.

"No, there's a few more. My friend Martha, she's studying to be a healer but she's sort of put that on hold to travel with us. And the Doctor, he's my…well, we're not married but…" she trailed off, biting the inside of her lip.

"Are you courting?"

"Something like that."

"And you love him?"

"Yes," she sighed, closing her eyes. "Very much."

Something like disappointment flickered in Po's gaze for a moment but it was gone quickly and he smiled. "What is his name?"

"The Doctor."

"That's his name? It seems more like a title than a name."

"Not exactly, but his people went by titles instead of their real names."

"Is he from another planet as well?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Well, you said 'his people' as if their not your own. You called yourself Dame Rose, a title followed by a name. His title preceded no name."

"You're observant," she noted, looking down. "But yeah, he is."

"And you do not care?"

"Not with him," she smiled. "I never did."

It was Po's turn to listen as she told him about her life on Earth, growing up in the Powell estate with her mum, that she hadn't gone on to higher education (Owen was still in the room so she didn't say why), and how she'd worked in a shop to pay off her debts. She told him of the Autons and meeting the Doctor and running straight into the ship without looking back, of watching the world burn in billions of years and going into the past and meeting a famous author, though she avoided all talk of the rift.

"But his driving is horrible," she laughed. "He got the flight wrong and ended up arriving twelve months after we left instead of twelve hours. I'd been missing for a whole year! Oh, my Mum nearly slapped him out the window."

Po chuckled.

"Ever since then the Doctor's been secretly terrified of her. It's hilarious, really, it is."

"She sounds like a formidable woman."

The sound of Rose Tyler laughing was like a magnetic force pulling Jack in. He stood on the upper level of the autopsy room arms folded in front of him on the railing, and listened with a smile on his face. Po made a sound that resembled laughter again and said something that made Rose snort. "Oh, hardly. He's completely useless without me."

"That he is," Jack agreed. Rose and Po looked up, the latter warbling curiously.

"He's agreeing with me."

"Jack," Owen called, motioning for him to come down. Jack pushed off the railing and descended the stairs. "I've got Beaky's results here. Quite a biology let me tell you. Take a look." He pointed a controller the projector and two images appeared on the wall. "Two hearts, two stomachs, four sets of lungs plus air sacs."

At the mention of two hearts, Rose sat up a little straighter. While she knew it was unreasonable to think the Doctor's people were the only in the universe to have two hearts, she'd never met another species with two. Not to her knowledge, at least. "He's got two hearts?"

Po tilted his head. "Of course. Don't you?"

"Yeah, he does," Owen said. "Higher metabolism rate than a human and about double the white blood cell count. His blood is thicker than ours, which is why he didn't lose more blood than he did with the bullet wound. Hollow bones, excellent muscle tones, thicker skin, and those talons of his are solid all the way through. I'd say Beaky here is designed to live it rough."

"He says they're all migrants," Rose explained. "Some of them travel all across the planet, some of them only move around a certain area."

"No, but its more than that. He's designed for survival. Literally. It's like someone took a human being and changed their biology to survive in the wild. …Ask him if there's others."

"What?"

"Ask him if there are other species like his on the planet."

"Po, is there any other species on your planet?" Rose asked. Po squawked. "I mean sentient species. They'd have their own homesteads and territories."

Po squawked again, nodding his head. Rose listened as he spoke, moving his hands around to illustrate whatever he was saying. "He says there are three groups: His kind, the Flyers, plus the types of Walkers, the Swimmers. The Walkers live on the ground and, from what he's describing, they're like big cats, wolves, and horses, I think. He doesn't know much about the Swimmers, other than they live in the oceans."

"Rose, ask him what year it is on his planet." Jack ordered quietly.

"I don't think they use the same measurements."

"Just do it."

She rolled her eyes and did as he asked. Po warbled back a response, which Rose translated. Jack inhaled slowly and nodded, folding his arms as he did the math in his head. That confirmed what he already had guessed: the rift had sucked Porruhk through space and time. He didn't know much about the planet Flane, only that it had once been a brilliant, advanced world and at some point in their history, Daleks had invaded and wiped out most of their population and cities. As a result, the survivors had allowed themselves to be altered genetically in order to be better prepared should they ever be threatened that way again.

Jack seriously hoped that they could find some way of getting Po out of the country, somewhere he could be safe. Torchwood One would never let him go if they found out about this and Rose would fight for him, he knew she would, and the Prince would fight to stay with her. What would happen if they figured out the two of them could communicate? Oh, he damn well knew. They'd take her, too, and sooner or later they'd figure out she was Rose Tyler, the last known companion of the Doctor.

Now how was he supposed to break it to them?

Unfortunately, her time with the Doctor had made Rose Tyler very good at reading people, and Jack was no exception. "Jack, what is it?"

Jack sighed, resting his hands on the railing. "From our perspective, Po is about two thousand years out of his time. I don't know the exact conversion, but I'd say he's from somewhere around the forty-sixth century. The rift pulled him through time as well as space."

"So can't you just open it up and send home?" Rose asked.

"No," Jack said seriously. "Rule number one: don't mess with the rift. We have no control of what comes through when or where and when it comes from."

Rose pressed her lips together. "You can't send him back."

Po made a quiet noise and gazed up at Jack with frightened green eyes.

"I'm sorry," Jack told them.

**Whoops.  
**


	4. Resolve

**Jeez, why does everyone think I'm gonna kill Po? Am I really that untrustworthy? I mean it's not like I have a history of murdering main characters or anything. Oh wait...**

* * *

Rose and Porruhk watched from the second level as team Torchwood worked below. Po perched on the railing with surprising ease for someone his size and Rose leaned next to him with her hands clasped in front of her.

"Rose, surely I am not the first to be transported here. What happened to my predecessors?"

She sucked in a sharp breath and refused to look at him. From the way Jack had been insistent that Torchwood One be kept in the dark, she had a sinking feeling she knew what Po's fate would be if they found out about him. His best future would be death in that case. But Jack wasn't the type of man to let that happen. He had to have his own methods of dealing with the aliens who came through, particularly the ones who weren't hostile. Some aliens looked human enough and probably were allowed to live among humans unmolested. But others, like Po, never could. What about them?

"I don't know," she finally answered.

"And what will become of me?"

"I don't know. You can't live with humans, but don't worry, Jack'll think of something. He's a good man."

Po sighed. "I am a burden."

"You an' me both."

"Surely not!"

She hung her head. "I am. I just sort of…dropped in on 'em the other day and caused a whole lot of trouble."

"Perhaps but I do think your presence has been quite beneficial. None of them can speak my language and yet you know it fluently."

She laughed. "Not really. I've got this, um, this telepathic translator in my mind. It processes what you're saying as you say it and translates instantaneously. To me, you're speaking English."

Po looked intrigued, his head cocked to the side thoughtfully. "Does this work for every language?"

"Mmhmm," she nodded. "As long as the person speaking is sentient."

"Amazing. I cannot fathom why you would be a burden. Your ability is extraordinary. My people have difficulty communicating with the Walkers who share our territory because we cannot produce many of the sounds they do. If we had someone like you as translator, we could accomplish so much.

"And here, you would be invaluable. In the place where I arrived, there were many humans screaming at me but I did not understand them, and they shot me. Your people were going to shoot me. You stopped them just by talking to me. How many of those that come after me will not speak the languages of your voices or bodies? Think of the good you could do."

Rose blushed and ducked her head again. Down below, Tosh was talking quietly to Jack. The two of them kept glancing up at the walkway where Rose and Po lurked.

"Jack has offered me a job here," she admitted.

"A job?"

"The team, the flock, they aren't a family. They're coworkers. This is their place of work."

"I understand. So Jack has invited you into the flock. That is good, is it not? He is your friend."

"Yeah, but, this—this is a small branch of an organization called Torchwood that's responsible for dealing with aliens. Which mostly means destroying anything they consider a threat and studying whatever's left. I was there when this all started.

The Doctor's at the top of their most wanted list and I suspect I'm right up there with him."

Po's feathers ruffled and his talons dug into the railing. "You mean to tell me that these people wish you harm?"

"No, no," she said quickly. "Not these people. This used to be like the bigger Torchwood in London but then Jack took over. He cut as many ties as he could. He's made them better, more about helping aliens and protecting people than advancing the empire and getting their claws into anything alien. But…even with that…Torchwood has hurt me so much. I don't know if I can work for them. Just the thought makes me feel…dirty. But the worst part—I don't really have a choice. There's nowhere else I can go that's safe."

The young prince was quiet for a moment, head cocked to the side once more. "You are a good person, Dame Rose Tyler. I have known you but a few hours and I know this to be true. You are the reason I am here now. I believe just by being here, by offering your gifts and kindness, you could do good."

"You really think I should accept?"

"I think they need you, even if they do not yet realize it. And if this truly is the only safe place for you, then I think you need them, too."

Rose nodded. "I'll talk to Jack about it. But we gotta get you sorted first."

Getting Po 'sorted' was easier said than done. He could not stay in Britain or Europe. Not only was the climate wrong but there was no way for him to blend in. Later that night after everyone else had gone home, Jack pulled up a map of the world on the computer in his office so Po could see his options. South America and India would be most suitable. Jack explained what he could about each place while Rose translated. But no matter what he chose, they would surgically place a tracker inside of him so they would always know where he was. Which meant if he was ever killed or taken captive, they'd know.

"You don't have to decide now," Rose assured him. "Think about it a bit. In the meantime, why don't you go wait on the couch? That thing out there against the wall, it's comfy, I promise."

Po nodded wordlessly and left Jack's office. Jack stood up and sighed, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

"Say what you wanna say, Jack," Rose implored.

"It'd be so easy just to put him in cryo."

Rose glanced out the door then hissed, "Cryo?"

Jack leveled her with a piercing look. "What do you think we do with aliens like him that come through? There's no way we can assimilate them into the population and since he's out of time, there's no way for UNIT to arrange for transportation off world. If Torchwood One doesn't come barging in, then we store them in cryo. There's nothing else _to_ do."

She took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. She wasn't really surprised. "How many?" she asked.

Jack hesitated. "How many what?"

"How many aliens do you have stored?"

"A lot."

Rose closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "Are they alive?"

"Some of them."

She swallowed, fists clenched at her sides. "If and when the Doctor makes it back…I want you to promise me you'll unfreeze them. We're gonna take them home. Po, too."

His lips turned up into a smile. "I wouldn't expect anything less. Now, onto a more important subject: you've not been sleeping, have you?"

She sighed and shook her head once.

He stood up and cupped her face in his hands, rubbing his thumb along the base of the dark circle beneath her eye. She struggled not to flinch away. She was still getting used to him being, well, _wrong_, and it was difficult having him so close. "You should've told me."

"I didn't want to be more of a bother."

Jack shook his head, wrapping his arms around her in a patented Jack Harkness hug, 'guaranteed to make you feel better or your money back'. She sighed and buried her face in his shoulders, sliding her arms around his waist. This, _this_, is what she missed most. The Doctor was tactile, so much of their relationship was physical, and not in the sexual way. He was almost always touching her even if it was just their fingertips brushing. She'd been starved of contact since coming here.

Jack pulled back and lifted her chin up with his hand. "Hey. It's okay. I know what you're going through. Things will get better. Maybe later rather than sooner but they will get better. You're strong enough to live your life without the Doctor. I'm not saying you should stop loving him or move on, but you need to learn how to live without him again."

_I know how to,_ she thought sadly and dropped her gaze. _But I don't want to._

"Would you like me to give you something to make you sleep? After the prince is gone we can do something else."

Rose shook her head. "I don't want to be stuck asleep if I start having nightmares. I can sleep it's just…I can't stay asleep. I wake up alone, I get scared, and then I can't go back to sleep."

"Well, then. Maybe you should sleep with me."

Her head snapped up. "Jack…" she warned.

"I meant literally. There's plenty of room in my bed for you." He rubbed his hands up and down her bare arms but there was nothing untoward with the gesture. "Rose, you know me. I won't ever take advantage of you. I'll kill the son of a bitch who ever tries."

She smiled.

"I'm offering you a mattress and a sleeping buddy. And it's up to you."

"Thanks, but…I think I should probably stay with Po. Someone's got to keep an eye on him." She didn't meet his eyes. She didn't know how to tell him she might not be able to sleep around him.

Jack nodded and patted her shoulders. "Okay."

Po was perched on the arm of the couch when Rose left Jack's office. She sat down on the couch and pulled her backpack from beneath the table. Po watched with interest as she unzipped it and rummaged through to find the vest top and track pants she'd been using as pyjamas and toiletries. She headed for the stairs that would lead her up to the second floor where the bathroom was.

"Where are you going?" Po asked.

"Just gonna get ready for bed." She stopped with her foot on the top stair and turned. "Do you need to use the toilet? Wash up a bit?"

"Please." He smiled in relief and she mentally kicked herself for not asking him sooner. He hopped off the couch and padded over to the stairs.

"Jack, I'm gonna take him up to the bathrooms!" she hollered as she jogged up the stairs.

That in itself proved to be an adventure. Flane may have once been a mighty technological planet but by Po's time, their technology had regressed by centuries. Things like toilets and showers were apparently thing of the past if the way Po stared blankly at them was anything to go by. She stumbled over her explanation of what the toilet was for and how it worked and he seemed quite amused by her embarrassment over such a banal subject.

"Rain!" He exclaimed when she turned the showerhead on.

"Well…sort of." She twisted the handle to the left. "Go on, feel."

He stuck his hand under the spray, turning it over slowly. "It is cold now. Freezing."

She turned the handle to the right, heating it up. Po's beak dropped open. "How are you doing that?!"

"Left is cold, right is hot. You can mess with it until you get the temperature where you like it. If you want soap, that's what that white lump is on the shelf right there. These hooks here—" she gestured to the hooks on the wall outside the shower stall "—are for your clothes."

Rose got him a towel from the cupboard and hung it on the hook next to his shower stall then left the shower area. She washed her face and brushed her teeth at one of the sinks. A very bird-like like whistling trickled through the air and she smiled around the toothbrush. When she was done, she changed into her pyjamas and spent the rest of the time brushing her hair while she waited for Po to come out.

When he did, she took one look at him and burst out laughing. His feathers were in a right state. Some were slicked down, others were sticking up at weird angles, and some of them were already starting to fluff back up. Through them she could see a puffy layer of down covering his scalp.

The fleshy corners of Po's beak turned down in displeasure and he folded his arms. "Do I amuse you?"

"I'm sorry!" she giggled. "Your feathers… Didn't you use the towel? The white thing I left hanging there. It's for drying yourself off."

"Oh. Um, no, I just…" He gave his head a great shake and droplets of water went flying every which way. She shrieked and held up her hands to ward them off. It was his turn to laugh. "But I will give this 'towel' a try."

He went to fetch it and he showed him how to run it over his feathers and squeeze the water out then let him try on his own. "This is far more effective than our method. I will definitely tell my mother about this when I—" He stopped midsentence and closed his beak.

Po unfurled his wings and began rubbing the towel across them, too. Rose could see it was getting pretty damp so she went to get him another one and helped by dabbing the wet areas around his stitches. He took the towel from her and got the rest of his wings.

"India and South America. The names feel weird on my tongue." Po lowered the towel and furled his wings onto his back. He stared at himself in the mirror. "I do not know what to do. They both are suitable, theoretically, but the thought of being…anywhere on my own…I have never in all my life been on my own. My people are meant to live in groups. We depend on each other for survival. Solitary life is punishment. And yet—" he turned around to face her "—I find myself in the same position as you. I have no other choice."

Rose closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. "There is another choice."

"What?"

She licked her lips and took another, deep breath. "Sleep. You could sleep." She opened her eyes. He was staring at her. "There's a place here, below, where they keep all the aliens they've found before. Some of them are still alive, sleeping, never aging, waiting for a chance to go back where they came from. You could sleep like them."

"For how long?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head. "I dunno. Months, years, centuries even. You're from the future. You could go to sleep and when you wake up, it'll be time to board a ship to Flane."

"Can you guarantee that?"

"No. But I can't promise how long you'll live out there, either. …But, either way, I promise you, if the Doctor comes back, when we get our ship back, we'll take you home. You can try to survive here on your own or you can sleep in our basement." He swallowed and bowed his head. "Think about it."

Rose led Po back down to the main area of the Hub. He got settled on the arm of the couch while she put her stuff away, unfolded the blanket, and settled down.

"You sure you're comfortable like that?" she asked and shifted her feet. "Plenty of room down there."

"This is how my people sleep," he responded tonelessly.

"Like a proper bird, you are."

Po glanced at her and his lips twitched upwards into the briefest of smiles then he looked away and closed his eyes. Neither of them said another word for the rest of the night. At some point, she heard the sound of something opening in Jack's office but other than that there was no sound except for those of the Hub, which were quickly becoming familiar to her. She drifted in and out of sleep throughout the night and tried to keep the tossing and turning to a minimum to not disturb Po. She couldn't tell if he slept or not but every time she peeked over at him he was in the same position, breathing slowly.

Suzie arrived around 8am, as normal. Rose was only a little surprised by the door alarm blaring. Poor Po, on the other hand, was frightened so much he actually lost a few feathers in his haste to get in the air. He screeched loudly, incoherently shouting or maybe a series of swears, but whatever it was it didn't translate. He landed on the third floor railing with back arched and wings spread, feathers fluffed, hands and feet curled around the metal. He hissed at Suzie who stood just in side the doorway, clutching a small container in her hands. The poor woman looked faint.

"Calm down, Po!" Rose shouted, propping herself up on her arms.

He stopped hissing and raised his head to look at her, feathers smoothing out. "Um," he squawked a moment later. "My apologies."

She nodded and let her head drop onto the pillow. She heard his wings beating as he flew down to the main level and the click of his talons as he landed.

"I, um, I brought him some fruit salad," Suzie stammered as she ascended the stairs to the platform where Rose and Po were. Rose translated as Suzie handed him the container. He accepted with a grateful bow of his head, a gesture Suzie seemed to understand because she answered it with a smile.

The door to Jack's office opened and the man himself emerged. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah, I just spooked him comin' in," Suzie explained. "He's a bit wild."

"He's on an alien planet," Jack reminded her then sauntered over to Po. "How you doing this morning, big guy?"

Rose relayed the greeting to their guest.

"I have only just awoken and cannot provide you with a wholly accurate answer." Po replied, glancing between them. Rose snickered and quoted him word for word.

Jack smiled. "Rose, you can wait until after breakfast if you want, but I need to know his decision today."

Jack and Suzie watched their two visitors head off to the kitchen, Po trailing after Rose like a lost puppy.

"Would you look at him?" Suzie muttered. "He's gone and bloody imprinted on her. Like a baby chicken or something."

"He's on an alien planet," Jack repeated. "He's lost in time and space, on his own. Every single person he knows hasn't even been born yet. His entire species probably hasn't even been created. She's the only one on this lump of rock that he can talk to. And not only that, she empathizes with him. Of course he's going to follow her around like she's his mother. Especially since he knows he has to leave her soon."

Suzie ducked her head. "I didn't think… You're right. But I, uh, I brought him breakfast. Figured he wouldn't like cereal or eggs so I made a fruit salad."

"Good thinking."

Owen arrived about fifteen minutes later and it seemed he'd had the same idea because he'd brought an assortment of berries with him. And Tosh brought a mixture of nuts and birdseed. The three of them had a good laugh about it because they hadn't planned or even discussed it beforehand.

Porruhk was pleasantly surprised when they presented him with the food, squawking and humming in his language that was a mix of humanoid and avian sounds. Rose was smiling as she provided the English translation and not for the first time, Jack missed being able to understand it himself. Though, on the flipside, he was able to hear Po's language for what it was. Rose never would.

Rose and Po sat on the couch while he munched on Tosh's nut and birdseed mix. Two stomachs meant twice the normal amount of food to be full, she thought. They'd have to pack some food for him for his journey, assuming he chose to live in one of the two places he'd been offered. He still hadn't said anything either way.

"Rose, I would like to see the sky."

She looked at him. His face was somber but resolute and she knew what he was planning. She reached over and curled her hand around his. "You're not going to go, are you?" she murmured.

"Please."

She squeezed his hand. "Okay. I'll ask Jack."

Jack wouldn't let him go out on the Plass. Too risky, even with the human tendency to _ignore_ alien things. Yesterday at the mall hadn't made the news but there was the chance someone would recognize him and whip out a camera phone. But the dock down by the main entrance was secluded enough for him to be allowed out. Susie and Owen went up first to act as a buffer against anyone who might head down the docks and Jack escorted Rose and Po a few minutes later.

Rose took a deep, long breath of the salty air and lifted her face towards the sun. Beside her, Po was doing the same.

"Your sun is less orange than ours. Warmer. Closer. Or maybe just bigger." He sighed. "I could get used to it. But I do not want to. …I always wanted to explore Flane, but not on my own. The thought of living on an alien planet on my own, possibly for the rest of my life—" He turned to her. "I cannot. I would rather sleep."

"Are you sure?" she asked. "Once you do this you can't change your mind."

"If I am asleep then I will not have the desire to."

Rose nodded slowly. "Okay. Okay. Jack…" She spun around to face the captain who stood several feet away with his hands in his pockets, facing the sea. He glanced her way and raised his eyebrows. "He's decided."

"Great!" Jack strolled over tot hem with a smile. "So, where's he going?"

"A cryo storage unit."

That wiped the smile off Jack's face. "What?"

"I told him about cryo. He would rather stay here with us, asleep, than face the planet on his own."

Jack took a deep breath and exhaled slowly and looked over Rose's shoulder. "Porruhk."

"What'd he say?" Po asked blandly.

"Your name," Rose told him, earing a surprised look.

"Say it again?"

"Porruhk," Jack repeated a moment later.

Po's beak opened slightly, and let out a puff, then closed it. He licked at the corner of his mouth then tried again. "Po-ruh-ck." Rose's eyes widened. She could hear his voice—his real voice—now that he was trying English. He sounded like a parrot trying to talk, squawky and whistling, but instead of a high nasally voice parrots had when they mimicked human words, she could hear the same voice she'd been listening to all day. "Po-r-ruck. Porruhk."

Rose beamed at him. "You did it."

Jack pointed to himself. "Jack. Ja-a-ack."

Po couldn't produce the right sound for 'j' since he didn't have teeth in the front of his beak so the name came out sounding like, "Gack."

Then Jack pointed to Rose and said her name slowly.

"Ro-ss." In his own language, "No, wait. That's not right." He tried again. "Ro-o-o-se. Rose." Po smiled. "How do you say: Northern Sun Flock?"

Rose relayed the request and Jack obliged. They did this for several minutes. Po asked how to say the names of his family, his planet, the continents, and things like, sun, sky, rain, tree, and sea. Then finally, Jack began explaining the cryogenic process they would use to place him in suspended animation in the simplest terms possible, and Rose repeated him word for word.

"And how long will I sleep for?" Po asked.

"Until we wake you up."

An hour later, back down in the Hub, Po was given a plain slip to wear with the back cut out to accommodate his wings. His clothes were placed in a storage container to be kept within the secure archives until such a time he awoke, just like all the others kept in suspended animation. He clutched Rose's hand tightly as she led him down into the medical room. Owen was already down there in his lab coat with a series of bottles, needles, and injectors on the table.

"South America is starting to seem nice," Po murmured as they neared the bottom of the stairs.

Rose turned around. "It's not too late to change your mind. You can still go to South America if you want."

Po glanced at Tosh and Suzie on the opposite stairs, then at Owen, and finally Jack. He took a deep breath and exhaled in a whistle. "No. I cannot survive alone out there."

"Okay." She tugged on his arm and they descended to the lower floor.

"Right, Beaky, up on the table." Owen gestured at the metal table in the center of the room.

Po did not wait for Rose to translate. He hopped up on the bed and carefully laid himself down on his back. He had to adjust his wings so he wasn't putting much weight on the wound and when he was ready, he nodded. Rose slid her hand into his and he clutched at it desperately.

"Okay, I ran a few tests, and I found a sedative that will work on him." Owen said. "I am going to inject it through his arm. It's going to remain in his system while he's frozen and it'll still be there when he's unfrozen until he's given the counterdrug."

Rose nodded and turned to Po. "He's gonna give you the sedative now. It'll make you sleep and it'll stay in your body when you're…suspended in cryo. So you don't wake up or anything. And when it's time for you to wake up, they'll bring you out, thaw you, and give you the counterdrug. It'll be just like a nap. …Right?" she looked up at the other members of Torchwood.

"Just like a nap," Tosh confirmed quietly. "It won't be like any time has passed at all."

Po raised his eyebrows.

"She's just agreeing with me." Rose opened her mouth to say more then pressed her lips together for a moment. Owen had the syringe ready and held it just over Po's arm, waiting. "If things go the way I hope, I'll be here when you wake up. But if not…well…"

"You will be there," Po said confidently.

"But if I'm _not,_ then good luck. And I hope you get to see your little sister again someday."

Rose smiled at him then glanced at Owen and nodded. He nodded once in reply then gently inserted the needle into Po's arm. Po exhaled in a puff and inhaled shakily. His eyes became unfocused as they stared at her until they finally slipped shut and he sighed.

She didn't cry. She felt like she should at least shed a tear but, honestly, she couldn't find it in her. It was far less sad than it would've been if she'd seen him off to South America. There was something comforting in knowing that he would be safe and sound below the Hub for however long he had to wait. He wouldn't have to worry about Sycorax, Daleks, Cybermen, or anything else that might turn up in the meantime. Really, if anything, she was relieved.

"Now we move him into a storage unit for the cryo process to begin. You'll have to let go of his hand," Owen added, surprisingly gentle.

"He'll be alright?" she checked.

"We've done this dozens of times."

"Rose, a word?" Jack requested. She nodded, squeezed Porruhk's hand one last time, then rested it over his abdomen. She bounded up the stairs just as Suzie descended on the other side, presumably to help Owen with Po.

Rose followed Jack into his office and he shut the door behind them. "Take a seat," he instructed. She settled down in the seat in front of his desk while he walked around behind it.

"What's up?" she asked.

Jack scooted his chair closer to the desk and leaned forward, folding his arms in front of him. "What you did was amazing. It may not seem like it but just by being able to speak with him you probably saved his life. You won't believe how often we find aliens who can't speak any Earth languages. It doesn't always end well."

Rose smiled knowingly. "You want me to work for you as a translator. …Po suggested the same thing yesterday. He said it'd be a mutually beneficial situation."

"It would be. Having someone on staff that can understand anyone from anywhere or when would be extremely helpful. We've got an entire vault full of things that haven't been translated. Tosh does her best but computer software can only do so much. Not to mention that little talent you have."

"What talent?"

"You turned this conman into an honest man." He paused; bobbing is head from side to side. "Well…mostly honest. People like you, Rose. Just something about you draws people in, they trust you, they let you help them. We _need_ that."

Rose sighed and propped her elbow on the arm of the seat, resting her cheek in her hand. "I know. But I—Jack what if Torchwood One finds me? They can't know I'm here or it's a paradox."

"I'm working on severing the final ties. They don't have access to our employee files anymore. Some of our CCTV footage still goes to their archives and I'll get Tosh working on that again, but they really don't have a reason to spy on us. If they do, the most they'll see is a new blonde hanging around the Hub. They won't know if you're an employee or a consultant or what."

"You're still Torchwood, though," she mumbled.

"By name only. I promise you, we're better than them. …And better looking."

"Well, can't argue with that last bit." She grinned at him and he smirked in reply. The smile slipped off her face and she closed her eyes. Was she really just prolonging the inevitable?

"I won't force you," Jack promised her quietly. "But I really wish you'd—"

Rose took a deep breath then took the plunge. "Okay."

"at least consider—what, really?"

"On one condition." She fixed him with her most severe look and he sat up straighter in his seat. "This is temporary. When the Doctor comes back, I'm goin' with him. I don't care about contracts or policies. This is not the life I want and I'm not going to settle."

Jack nodded slowly. "I figured you'd say that." A smile spread across his face, part smug, part eager, and his eyes gleamed in the light. "…Welcome to Torchwood."

* * *

**SEE? I DIDN'T KILL THE BIRD. **

**Welcome to Torchwood, Rose :3 **


	5. Living Situation

**Ok...so it's been a little longer than I thought. Oops?**

* * *

That night, Rose decided she couldn't continue sleeping on the couch. Both Tosh and Suzie had offered to let Rose stay with them but Jack wouldn't allow it. They hadn't seen any sign of the Master since that first sighting on the CCTV except for the occasional possible glimpse, but nothing confirmed. That didn't mean anything though. He was a Time Lord and he had the TARDIS at his disposal. Rose was adamant that the TARDIS would fight him—was fighting him—but agreed that there was only so much she could do. The Master was not to be underestimated and Rose was not to be left alone and defenseless.

"She won't be alone or defenseless," Tosh argued. "I'm perfectly capable of keeping an eye on her."

"I have no doubt, but you're no match for him." Jack warned her. "Neither are you, Suzie. I'm not going to argue about this. Rose, you're living with me."

"I'll live where I choose." Rose snapped, bristling. "I am not nineteen years old anymore, Jack."

"And how am I supposed to face the Doctor if you get hurt?" he asked. "You've got to admit that I've got the best chance against the Master if he shows up. And I make a great shield," he added with a grin.

She scowled. "You make that joke one more time and I swear I will test that theory."

"Rose, it's up to you." Suzie said.

She inhaled slowly and let it out through her nose. Jack wouldn't make her do anything she didn't want to do; at least she didn't think he would. They'd never been a position where he'd taken it upon himself to decide for like the Doctor was prone to do. She didn't know if he would try with this or not but she wasn't keen to find out.

His logic was sound. Jack would make a better offense against the Master. She knew him better than Tosh and Suzie, had lived with him before, and was more comfortable around him than anyone else on his team so far.

After everyone else had gone home for the night, Jack motioned her into his office and gestured to a manhole cover in the floor near his desk. She stared, confused, until he laughed and lifted it out of the way. She peered over the side and was surprised to see a narrow tunnel with a ladder leading down into a small room. She could see a bed, a nightstand, and what she thought might be a wardrobe.

Rose straightened. Mouth twisted in displeasure, she rounded on Jack. "I am not sleeping down there for the next—however long I'm here."

"I didn't expect you to," he replied evenly. "I was just showing you where I sleep in case you ever need anything. Or if you want to take me up on the offer of a sleeping buddy."

"You don't have a flat? You really live here fulltime?"

He shook his head. "I don't like to have any lingering attachments in case I need to disappear. It's easier for me to stay here. And this way someone is here at almost all times."

"Do you plan to just keep me locked down here?" she demanded. "I don't let the Doctor wrap me in cotton and you're not gettin' away with it either, Jack Harkness. I will box your ears and make a run for it if I have to."

"I'm going to protect you, Rose. That doesn't mean I'm going to lock you up, it means I'm not going to leave you vulnerable. Right now I'd like you to stay down here where we can keep you safe until you can do it yourself. I'll teach you how to shoot a gun, how to fight, how to know when you're being followed, and more. Everything the Doctor never bothered with. I'll teach you how to be a Torchwood agent. Until then, please, just let me sleep peacefully knowing there's not a homicidal Time Lord sneaking into your bedroom."

Rose bit the inside of her lip and considered him. "And then later, after you teach me all this, if I want to stay with Tosh?"

"Go for it, as long as Tosh agrees."

She sucked a long, slow breath in through her nose and then exhaled. "Alright. Deal. So where will my room be?"

"You mean you don't want to share?" he asked, looking put out.

She shot him a look.

"There are several of these throughout the Hub." He explained as he closed the manhole. "They're for storage or emergencies, in case we have to hide, for whatever reason. They're not on any of the schematics, either, so if anyone hacked our systems the rooms will be all but invisible. That's one reason why none of them know I live here. I'll show you where each of them are and you can decide for yourself. Tomorrow we'll go out and get you a mattress and sheets and all that. Plus," he looked her up and down. "You're going to need more clothes."

"And how will you explain the charges on the Torchwood accounts?" she asked. "Torchwood One can't know I'm here. Ever."

"I understand. But I wasn't planning on using any official Torchwood accounts. Got a bit of money to my name. And as soon as you finish your first pay period, so will you."

"I'll pay you back."

"No, you won't. Trust me, Rose, my account has been gathering interest since 1906. We could get you a flat in the most expensive part of town and it would hardly make a dent. You can pay for your own clothes if you want but the furniture? That's on me."

Before they could even buy her a bed, though, they had to know what space they were working with. Jack led her around the many halls around and beneath the Hub, a more extensive tour than the one she'd been given before. As they went, he showed her the room options. They were all concealed behind shelves or signs or even a fake wall. Most of them were incredibly tiny, a mere fraction of her room on the TARDIS. The most spacious one was the size of Jackie's kitchen.

"This place wasn't designed to be lived in," he reminded her when he noticed her displeasure. "These are storage rooms, emergency shelters."

"I know," she sighed. "But if I'm gonna live here…I'd at least like to be able to move around. Don't you have anything else?"

Jack leaned against the wall, twisting his mouth thoughtfully. "You know…I just might. But it's on the map," he warned her.

"I don't care."

"This way." Jack motioned with his hand.

Rose followed him up from the basement back into the Hub. She thought he was leading her back to his office but instead of turning right at the top of the small steps, he turned left and headed up the stairs that led to the more recreational areas. Then he led her up another set of stairs. The third floor was where the kitchen and rest and recreation rooms were. He led her past them both. When he finally stopped it was in the middle of the hallway in between two steel doors labeled with the Torchwood logo and big yellow letters: WARNING: HIGHLY DANGEROUS OBJECTS WITHIN. Beside each door was a simple thumb print scanner. Jack placed his thumb on the scanner on the left side. It beeped once and the door hissed as it unlocked.

He pulled it open and hit the light switch on the side. The room was mostly empty. A few shelves, also mostly empty, lined the walls. The walls and floor were made of smooth concrete, completely plain, and the lights were standard fluorescent.

"What is this?"

"Storage room. But I've moved most of the stuff down into the vaults now. The rest of this we could have out tonight. It's big enough for a bed, bedside table, even a wardrobe if you wanted. What am I saying? You need one to put your clothes in. There's even an electrical output somewhere over there." He gestured to the back of the room. "What do you think?"

"Looks like a prison cell," she said bluntly. "But it's better than the others. Could make it look homey with the right stuff. All right. This one it is. But, uh, could we…not tell the others where I live?"

"Why?"

"'Cos if I gotta live down here, I need something that's…_mine_. You don't invite them down into your little cubby, do you?"

"They don't even know about it," he confirmed. "But this means you and I are going to have to do this all ourselves. It's going to take a few days."

"Then we should probably get started."

They got the alien artifacts moved to a temporary vault in Jack's office that night. He also disabled both cameras in the hallway so no one—namely Tosh and Suzie—could track her through the CCTV footage. Once the room was clear, he used his vortex manipulator to calculate the exact dimensions of the room down to a millimeter. By the time they were finished Rose wanted nothing more than collapse into bed. Her muscles were aching and she could feel a migraine building behind her eyes.

Jack looked around the room with his hands on his hips. He exhaled. "That's all we can do for tonight. Tomorrow we'll go shopping whenever I get the chance and work on getting these shelves disassembled and the room sanitized. In the meantime, let's get you to bed. You look like you're about to fall over."

No surprise there. She hadn't had a good night's sleep since her last night on the TARDIS and it was really starting to take a toll. Owen had called her a zombie earlier. She sure as hell felt like one most of the time. She followed him silently down to the main hub and wasn't even bothered when Jack took hold of her arm and walked her down the stairs with the same care given to a two year old. God, she needed sleep.

The TARDIS hummed sympathetically in her mind.

_Can't you just…fly yourself back to the Doctor? Or fly yourself to me? _She thought and received a wave of denial and sorrow in reply. Then an image of a section of console controls, including the lever that Rose knew kept the ship from dematerializing. They were both equally trapped.

"Rose. Rose?" She suddenly became aware that Jack was standing right in front of her. She flinched away at the sudden the _wrongness_ and averted her eyes.

"Sweetheart, why do you do that?" he asked.

"Do what?" she mumbled.

"Look away. Don't think I haven't noticed. You can't stand to look at me for more than a minute even when its just the two of us."

Tears welled in her eyes. She'd tried so hard to not make it obvious. In the Silo he hadn't seemed bothered by it at all so she'd just assumed…. "I'm sorry. It's just difficult to look at you. You're not right, Jack. And I know it's my fault, I bloody know it, but some instinct of mine says you're wrong. I'm trying to get it to shut up, I really am, 'cos you know I love you and I didn't want to hurt you but…"

"Okay, okay, shhhh," he soothed and she realized she'd been babbling. He cupped her face in his hands and rubbed her cheeks soothingly with his thumbs. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, and tried to stop the tears. "I understand, okay. You're not the first one to react to me in some way. It's been happening for decades. It's not your fault."

"It's getting harder," she mumbled.

"Maybe because you're tired. You haven't had a good night's sleep in, what? A week?"

"Just about."

"Why don't you sleep with me tonight? You don't have to face me if it makes you more comfortable. Just please let me help you."

Rose wrapped her arms around her chest. "I need…I need _him_, Jack."

"I know. But I can't bring him back to you. Not yet. Besides, you've never had a real cuddle with me before," he added teasingly. "You don't know what you're in for."

She managed to smile. He left her alone so she could change into her jammies and brush her hair. She was too tired to make the trip back up to the bathroom so she just left her toiletries in her bag. Then she grabbed her bag and pillow and stumbled into his office. He was waiting for her, leaning against his desk in a t-shirt and black trousers that looked suspiciously like track pants.

Opening the manhole in his floor, he tossed her pillow down then set her backpack underneath his desk for safekeeping. He motioned for her to go first and she carefully eased herself down the thin metal rails that served as stairs. The bed was directly next to the bottom of the steps and instead of going all the way down, she angled her body and dropped onto Jack's bed.

"Having fun?" he asked as he descended.

"Your bed's cushy," she informed him.

Jack grinned at her then climbed down the rest of the way. He undid his vortex manipulator, pulling open the drawer of his bedside, then reached inside. Rose heard a tiny click and she craned her neck to see inside. Jack slid the bottom of the drawer back, revealing a small compartment. He set the vortex manipulator inside then closed it all back up.

Jack glanced at her. "Gotta keep it safe. The odds of anyone making it this far are astronomical but you never know."

"If it makes you feel better, you were wearin' it when I saw you."

"Really?" He bobbed his head to the side once. "Good to know. Now scoot."

Rose rolled over to the other side of the bed to give him room. It was barely larger than a single person bed so it was going to be a tight fit but they'd be fine. They'd slept in tinier places, long ago. He settled down next to her, facing the opposite wall, careful to keep space between their bodies until she scooted closer to him on her own. She pressed her back against his and found, to her delight, that it was bearable. So she snuggled closed, stretching her neck to bump the crown of her head against the base of his.

"Okay?" he asked.

"Yeah. …Thank you."

"Any time."

And despite the warning in the back of her mind, the uncomfortable sensation in her gut, and the prickling along her skin, it was the best night's sleep she'd had since arriving. She woke up the next morning with her face buried between Jack's shoulder blades, no worse for the wear, and smiled to herself.

"I feel you smiling," he whispered. "You slept well, then?" Rose nodded. "So did I. We should do this more often."

"Mmm," she hummed in agreement. "At least until I get a proper bed."

The rest of Torchwood was quite surprised when they showed up for work to find Rose fresh-faced, makeup on, hair pulled back, and dressed like she was more than a freeloader. She put on her nicest pair of jeans, her pink trainers, and a pink t-shirt with the blue crown on it that she found at the bottom of her bag.

"You look nice," Tosh said with a sweet smile as she set her bag down at her terminal.

"Yeah, what's the occasion?" Owen asked snidely from his chair.

"Y'know, funny you should ask." Jack sauntered out of his office, fully dressed, manipulator on his arm, and ready to go. "Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please?"

Tosh turned around in surprise. Owen leaned back in his chair. Suzie looked up from her desk across the room.

Jack put his hands on Rose's shoulders. "Say hello to the newest member of Torchwood."

"What?" Suzie deadpanned.

"You accepted?" Tosh was surprised. "But you said—"

Rose cut her off. "I've got nowhere else to go. Nothing else I can do. And this way, everyone benefits."

"And what exactly is a 20-year-old with no A-levels, no job experience outside a shop, and a giant target on her back qualified to do around here, eh?" Owen demanded. "Stack papers. Water plants? Fetch coffee?"

Rose swiveled her head around and glared at him furiously. "I'm not exactly new to aliens or any of this."

Owen's lips were pressed together in a thin line and he glared at her. "I don't know what it is you get up to in your free time, Tyler, but this is not some game. We don't just sit down here, dicking around, eating pizza, and rescue friendly birds. The stuff of nightmares comes through the rift and this entire city depends on us making sure they are contained. There's a reason our staff is so small and I've seen nothing that makes me confident that you're suited for Torchwood."

Rose knew he had a point and it was her fault for not having told them the truth about her life. She could do it now, but would they believe her? She had no proof of ever being on alien plants other than her word and most of the notable incidents she would normally use for credibility hadn't even happened to them yet.

"I decide who's got what it takes to be on this team," Jack replied. "And I say she is."

"Why? What's she done? What can she do?" Owen shot back. "And I mean apart from the language thing 'cos that—"

"I know how to handle myself, Owen." Rose cut in sharply. "Been doin' it for years. You don't have to worry about me."

"You ever gonna tell us why?" Suzie asked

"You ever gonna give me a reason to?" Rose countered and no one had anything to say to that.


	6. Hazing

**Slowly updating, but still updating.**

* * *

Cardiff was warmer than usual this time of year, a fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on who you asked) after effect of the rift being exploited a few weeks prior by one Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen. Rose personally was quite pleased by the warmer weather. She soon discovered after joining Torchwood that they frequently made trips out after dark and not having to bundle up was a definite plus. A dark jacket and dark trousers to avoid attention, her trainers, a pair of warm brown glittens, and a scarf was just enough to keep her comfortable.

"Now, it's real simple," Owen muttered under his breath so as not to disturb the thing they'd been chasing for the last twenty minutes. They'd managed to herd it down an alley with a dead end. Now it was all a matter of capturing it. "All you gotta do is get his attention and lead him back to us. We'll take care of the rest."

Rose scowled, not at all trusting the wheedling tone of her coworker. "And why can't one of you do it?"

"'Cos we know how to take one down and you don't. So until then, you get to be bait."

"This is hazing."

"Yeah, pretty much."

Rose gritted her teeth. At least Owen wasn't trying to hide it. Jack's word was evidently not enough to convince them she was capable of being in Torchwood. She should've known it wouldn't be but she'd hoped they respected his judgment enough. Owen and Suzie were supposed to be keeping her out of trouble but instead they were trying to rope her into being weevil bait. Well, Owen was. Suzie wasn't saying anything but if she disagreed with Owen she'd have stopped him by now.

"Besides," he added, "should be no trouble for you. Didn't you say you run for your life all the time?"

She rolled her eyes. Figures he'd use that against her now. She didn't have a problem with being bait, exactly. She'd been bait before for things far creepier than the thing lurking down the alley. She didn't like that she was being forced into this.

One tap on the Bluetooth in her ear and Jack would know what they were trying to make her do. But that wasn't what she wanted. She didn't want one of her first hunts with Torchwood to be marred by her tattling to get out of something. No, she wanted to show them that she could do this, dammit. And if that meant having to be bait…well…

Jack was going to be absolutely livid when he found out.

Rose rolled her shoulders and flexed her toes. "Fine. One weevil, coming up. You better be ready for it."

Suzie pulled a canister from her pocket and nodded. "Good luck."

She bit back the urge to glare at the woman and instead started down the alley. She could hear the creature rooting around the rubbish bins, bags and paper rustling, plastic creaking, and the clangs of hard objects against tin. Jack called them weevils, animalistic aliens that came through the rift every so often. Leathery and bald, vicious and bloodthirsty with teeth and jaws perfect for ripping into flesh. They were virtually identical and they all wore the same navy blue outfit. Jack had made a point to stress how dangerous they were before letting her join them on the chase.

The weevil seemed unaware of her as she approached. She walked slowly on the balls of her feet, keeping the rest of her body as still as possible. When she neared, the weevil started growling but made no move towards her. Not even when she was a mere four feet away. It simply continued on its search, paying her no mind except to growl.

She'd have to provoke it to get it to follow but she didn't dare get any closer to it. She looked around for something to throw at it and her wrist brushed the gun at her waist. She tensed. Then, slowly, slid her hand to the hilt.

Jack had been teaching her in Torchwood's firing range. It was a mandatory requirement for working in Torchwood and she'd been unable to get out of it. Now she could make a kill shot at 30 yards and was quickly progressing to 50.

Rose jerked her hand away from the gun. No. She wasn't going to kill it just because it was an alien. She wasn't like _them_. And for all she knew, it was sentient. It was wearing clothes after all.

She cleared her throat and let out a tiny, "Um," and received a growl in reply. Rose glanced at the mouth of the alley. She couldn't see Owen or Suzie but she knew they were nearby. "C-can you understand me?" she whispered.

The weevil paused and looked straight at her. Black eyes met brown and alien and human regarded each other in the gloom.

"You have to come with me," she continued at the same volume. "Or go back underground. One or the other."

For a moment, the weevil seemed to be considering her words. Then it growled, snorted loudly, and went back to rummaging through the rubbish.

Rose inhaled shakily through her nose and glanced around her feet for something she could use to use as a projectile. She spotted a beer bottle a few feet away and inched towards it. The weevil growled and she froze for a second, glancing at it, then kept going. Her fingers curled around the cool glass, mindful of the sticky-looking stuff on the bottom, and straightened up. She skirted around the weevil so she was between it and the exit.

"Psst," she hissed. "Weevil."

It looked up, baring its teeth at her. She pulled her lips back and growled in return, which made it growl louder, but it still didn't charge her. She gripped the bottle firmly in her hand, drew her arm back, then chucked it at the weevil with all her might.

The bottle made contact with the weevil's shoulder. It roared furiously and charged. Rose let out a yelp and sped back up the alley. Adrenaline rushed through her anew and she smiled despite herself. It felt good to be moving again after being stationary for so long. She flew out of the alley so fast she almost didn't see Owen and Suzie lying in wait on either side. She kept running, even when she heard Suzie let out a shout and the weevil's snarls changed from angry to enraged.

She didn't stop until she was halfway up the block. By the time she turned around, chest heaving, she saw Suzie and Owen standing triumphantly over the unconscious alien on the ground. Suzie lifted her hand to her ear and a moment later her voice came through the speaker in Rose's ear.

"_Jack, we got it."_

"_Nicely done,"_ Jack replied almost immediately. _ "How'd Rose do?"_

"_Well, she was a bit slow in getting it's attention, but—"_

"_I'm sorry,_ what_? You had her play weevil bait?" _

Rose lifted her hand, which was trembling from the adrenaline to press the button on her comm. "It's alright, Jack. One weevil? Easy. Besides, it didn't even seem to think I was a threat. Or prey."

"_Seriously?"_ Owen asked.

"I had to chuck something just to get it to chase me."

Even from where she was, she could see the shock on Owen and Suzie's faces. She should've known then that they weren't just going to accept this. Weevils were vicious and anything that breathed showed up on their threat radar.

While they were waiting for Jack to arrive, Owen showed her their way of tagging weevils. Every time they caught a weevil they would brand it with a simple black spot on the back of the neck. Anything more, like a number or a tracking device, the weevils brethren would know and kill it. They'd tried every form of identification and tracking over the decades but nothing worked. In the end, they found marking every weevil with a little dot was the only thing the weevil population would accept. After ten years, all the weevils that lived in Cardiff had been marked at least once. Every time they had to deal with a weevil, they would mark it upon recapturing. Policy was that if they caught a weevil with five marks on its neck, it was put down.

"So, let's have a look at ol' Charlie boy here." Owen said as he knelt down. He carefully maneuvered the weevil's head so they could see its neck. The leathery flesh was completely bare. He tapped its neck. "Fresh out of the rift."

He pulled a slender black stylus from his pocket and pressed it to the base of the weevil's skull. He pressed a small button and it emitted a tiny beep, its tip lighting up blue for a few seconds. Releasing the button, the nose and light died, and he lifted it away. The first black dot was now in place.

"So what do we do with it?" Rose asked.

"We take it to the sewers." Suzie answered.

She wasn't kidding. As soon as Jack arrived, they loaded the Weevil into the back then drove for fifteen minutes through the city until they reached a nondescript manhole. Jack and Suzie lifted it while Owen showed Rose how to drop the poor bastard down the hole, feet first. Rose was surprised at how careless they were with the unconscious aliens but Owen brushed off her concerns. They were very tough and a Weevil that woke up sore was less likely to surface any time soon.

The ride back to the Hub was quiet, almost tense. Rose couldn't see why. She thought things had gone quite well. The weevil was off the streets and no one had been maimed. She'd proven she could handle weevils, was the best one for approaching them, and wasn't the best one to play weevil bait. Jack would probably be able to find some use for that down the road. But as she stared out the window, she could feel the eyes of Tosh and Owen on her, and no one so much as whispered until Jack spoke up.

"Tosh, we're by your flat. Want me to drop you off?"

"Uh, sure," she replied. "Will you make sure I didn't leave coffee by my keyboard when you get back?"

"Can do."

"G'head and drop me off, too," Owen said. "I've got nothing to finish tonight."

Jack pulled up next to a block of rather posh flats and Rose felt her jaw drop. She couldn't imagine how much these cost to live in. She probably paid in one month what Jackie used to pay in three or four. But if her salary was anything like Rose's, she had plenty of pounds to spare even after rent. Rose hated that money was building in her account and she never used it. More than anything, she wanted to send some to her mum, but Jackie had never mentioned anything about mysterious funds arriving. Unless she'd been instructed not to…

It was something to think about.

They dropped Owen off just a few blocks away outside another set of posh apartments. Surprisingly, Suzie followed him out.

"You want up front?" Jack asked as Suzie got out.

"Yeah," Rose said, opening her door. She hopped in up front and shut the door behind her, watching through the tinted windows as her coworkers headed towards the flats together. "She doesn't…live here too?"

"Nope."

"Wow. They're not even trying to hide it," she muttered as they drove off.

He chuckled. "Nope."

"God, if this is what Owen's like when he's getting regular shags, I don't even wanna know what he's like when it's been a while."

Jack burst out laughing and about hit a telephone. Rose shrieked alarm, gripping the sides of her seat like she hadn't done since the last time she sat on the jumpseat during a wild TARDIS flight. "You're as bad as the Doctor!" she accused.

"But twice as handsome."

"Well…" she drawled, unclenching her fingers.

He glanced between her and the road several times, mouth opening and closing as if he planned to protest, then frowned crossly at the road in front of him. She giggled then lapsed into silence.

"Rose…" he began slowly. "Why did you go after that weevil alone?"

Rose sighed. She knew this had been coming. "Owen and Suzie goaded me into it."

"And you let them?"

"What else could I do, Jack? If I backed out, I'd look like I couldn't handle it or I was afraid. Same thing if I called you, plus they'd know I wasn't afraid to tattle. I had to prove I could hold my own and that was the only way."

"Hmm," he muttered and she couldn't tell who he was cross with. "And do you think it worked."

"Yeah."

"Do you think it made it worse?"

She frowned. "How do you mean?"

"Well, you proved to us that they're sentient enough to recognize they're being spoken to, which shouldn't come as a surprise to them considering your talent. Except, that weevil didn't consider you a threat. They consider everyone to be a threat and they always respond in one of two ways: fight or flight. It did neither with you until you showed it you were to be reckoned with."

"How's that bad?"

"Because the only creatures they don't attack on sight are their own kind."

Rose's eyes widened. "Shit," she breathed.

"Exactly."

"I-I mean, I have had certain races treat me a little differently than they did Martha or even the Doctor, sometimes people could sense things, but—god, I didn't even think."

"It's not your fault," he assured her. "And I'm not mad at you. This could be important later on and, hey, you've taught us more about the weevils. But I just want you to be prepared for what you might face tomorrow when the team shows up. They're going to want answers."

She exhaled in a sharp puff and rested her forehead against the cool glass. "But I don't even know."

"I doubt they'll accept that."

"Can't you just tell 'em to bugger off?"

"That's not gonna work forever. Now, I'm not saying you have to, but maybe you should consider telling them the truth about how you know all these languages."

Rose gave him a look. "You expect me to tell them that I have a telepathic connection with a sentient inter-dimensional time/space ship that translates for me? Do you also want me to tell them I live with Torchwood's most wanted and that I'm from the future while I'm at it?"

"No," he assured her. "But I think you're going to have to tell them part of the truth. Just enough that they'll accept your answer and no more than you're comfortable with—and, yeah, I know you'd rather they be kept in the dark entirely, but they're you're teammates. You're gonna have to trust them sooner or later. Right now, though, what you tell them is up to you. I won't order anything, but I _recommend_ you don't lie to them. And, no, lying by omission doesn't count in this case."

She exhaled softly and closed her eyes. Easier said than done.

The next morning, Rose took her sweet time getting ready. It was weird having a small closet again instead of one that expanded and had new outfits appear periodically, but thanks to Jack and a gaggle of eager women he'd charmed at the mall, she had a good selection to choose from. She didn't foresee any excursions today so she chose a pair of jeans, a cream t-shirt, light brown sweater, and trainers. She brushed her teeth twice, and made sure to count out exactly one hundred strokes of her hairbrush, then spent another ten minutes with a curling iron. After that she did her makeup, returned her things to her room, and headed for the kitchen where she proceeded to kill another fifteen preparing and eating oatmeal.

When she could waste no more time, she finally descended into the main Hub where, sure enough, the entire team was already at work. She managed to make it down to the second level before she was noticed and by the time she was on the main floor, all three of her coworkers were watching her. She wondered which of them would be the one to ask first.

_Unless…_ The sudden thought brought her up short. So far her approach had been to keep everything close to the vest, to let out harmless bits of information here and there but to not reveal anything potentially damning unless she was forced. Now she was faced with a situation where she was going to have to reveal something she considered damning and up until now she'd been planning to wait until they made her. But there was another way and maybe, just maybe, it'd make things better in the long run.

Rose sat down in her desk chair and took a deep breath. _I can do this_. She turned around. Owen was sitting at his terminal, watching her. Suzie was with Tosh at her terminal and both of them were pretending to be interested in something on the screen. "Hey, um… Tosh, Suzie, Owen?"

She opened her mouth, closed it, trying to decide how best to say what needed to be said. "About last night—"

"You gonna tell us why the weevil didn't try to kill you?" Owen guessed.

"I…" Rose looked down at her hands in her lap. "I really can't answer that." He scoffed and she raised her head. "No, seriously, I can't. I don't know why. I've never encountered anything quite like a weevil before. Maybe if I knew more about them I could guess but…" She shrugged helplessly and swallowed. "B-but it understood me when I spoke, I'm sure of it."

"Did it respond?" Tosh queried.

Rose shook her head. "But it definitely understood me which means they have a language…of sorts. They just never speak it. Or maybe it's something that isn't spoken. It could be telepathic, which also makes sense."

"How so?"

She swallowed again. Now or never. "Because I'm telepathic."

The curiosity slipped off Tosh's face, replaced with pure shock. Owen's eyes bugged out of his head and Suzie's jaw dropped. Rose saw Jack standing in his doorway, observing the scene silently. Their eyes met for a moment and he raised his eyebrows.

"Well, not entirely telepathic," she went on quickly. "Okay not at all, really, but I do have certain abilities related to telepathy. Like…my translating thing, it's all done telepathically."

Owen leaned forward in his chair, suddenly very interested. "How? The human brain can handle some level of telepathy but not innately and something like this—"

"I'm not the only one. There's been loads of others who've had this before. Jack did." She nodded to the ex-Time Agent. "But it's gone from him now, his link to the source of it was broken. I'm not sure when it kicks in, exactly, but do have some idea of how it works. All speech is translated in my head for me, it's automatic, and I can't stop it. Then, when I talk, it selects the dominant language of the area or the dominant language of the person I want to talk to and that's what I speak. Mostly. It's complicated, alright? But that's how I could understand Po and that's how the weevil could understand me."

"But how?" Tosh asked.

"And why?" Suzie added. "Why would you need something like that?"

"I'm a traveller," Rose reminded them. "It's so much easier without having to worry about language barriers."

"But _how_?" Tosh repeated.

Rose tapped her head with her pointer finger. "Alien tech."

"There's an alien inside your brain?" Owen exclaimed, looking quite alarmed.

Rose's brow furrowed in confusion. "No?"

"It's alien technology that works telepathically," Jack interrupted, coming to her rescue. "There is a two way connection between her mind and the translator source. Her brain sends the information to the translator and it cycles back the information in the appropriate language. It's instantaneous, too, so she hears everything in real time. And, no, before you ask, the translator doesn't record what it receives."

For a moment, no one said anything. Each of the three seemed to be processing what they'd learned and considering it. Suzie was staring at her feet, Tosh at the floor, and Owen directly at her. Rose shifted nervously in her seat. This was it: the moment of truth. Either they'd accept her or they wouldn't. She wasn't sure what she'd do if they didn't.

"How come you never said anything?" Owen asked.

"Because I had no way of knowing how you react," she answered honestly. "I knew what Torchwood One would do. You've all insisted you're different but at the core, both branches are the same. Don't deny it." She gave Jack a hard glare. "Don't. You know I'm right." To the others, "And there's people I have to protect. People that would be at risk…people who are at risk just by me being here. I couldn't trust that one of you wouldn't…out me to Torchwood One…or make it your personal mission to locate anyone else who might be like me."

Tosh shifted uncomfortably.

"And I would rather keep them safe than let you all in on the big secret before I think you've earned it."

With that, Rose folded her arms and leaned back in her chair, waiting. None of them moved, except for Owen, who finally looked away from her. Seconds passed in silence and Rose's heart rate refused to slow. She was beginning to wonder if anyone was going to talk when Suzie finally did.

"Thank you."

Two simple words that could hold as much or as little meaning as the speaker wanted. Coming from Suzie in that moment, they were enough to lift some of the weight pressing down on Rose.

"I won't tell anyone," she promised.

"Me, neither," Tosh added.

Everyone turned to look at Owen. He studied her critically, sizing her up, weighing the options. Suzie's expression hardened and Jack cleared his throat loudly, pointedly. Owen glanced at him briefly. "You're not telling us everything."

"No," Rose agreed matter-of-factly.

He nodded slowly, accepting this. "Alright then."


End file.
